Criminalization of HIV transmission and media coverage: crime news upholding sensationalism and homophobia
Abstract
Introduction: Current journalistic coverage of HIV mainly addresses the virus as a global epidemic, leaving out the risk-groups discourse that has linked the virus to the gay community. In recent years, HIV has been the subject of journalistic attention due to deliberate transmission of the virus being prosecuted. Objectives: This research analyzes the media coverage of two European men tried in 2017: Daryll Rowe, of Scotland, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for trying to infect 10 men with HIV, and Italian Valentino Talluto, convicted of transmitting the virus to 32 women. This study seeks to identify dominant characteristics of both coverages and the differences between the representations of the different sexual orientations of those involved. Methodology: Content analyses, both quantitative and qualitative, were applied to the 81 pieces of news coverage collected. Results: The coverage of the two trials privileges a sensationalist approach that upholds inaccuracies in the language used, and it is structured around the victim/villain dichotomy, showing differences between both episodes. Conclusion: Covering HIV as crime news promotes an emotional framing of the disease that can negatively affect how readers relate to HIV-positive people, in addition to revealing the persistence of certain homophobic biases in the media.
Downloads
All articles published in this journal –unless otherwise stated- are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerives (CC-BY-ND 3.0 ES) Spain 3.0 License, which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit in a public way as long as they credit the author(s), journal and institution that publish these articles, and provided that they are not altered or modified. The complete license can be consulted in: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/deed/.es
The copyright belongs to the manuscript’s author just on the basis of creating this work:
- Moral rights are undeniable and inalienable.
- Economic or exploitation rights can be transferred to third parties, as it occurs when articles are published and authors partially or totally transfer their exploitation rights to publishers
Authors can archive their own articles in an institutional repository as long as their publications are cited in this journal.
