Understanding Culture and Its Influence on HIV/AIDS-Related Communication Among Minority Men Who Have Sex With Men

ABSTRACT

Scholarly research and government surveillance reports demonstrate that African American and Latino men who have sex with men (MSM) bear an inequitable burden of new HIV infections. Among the estimated 31,896 HIV infections attributed to male-to-male sexual contact in 2011, approximately 62% occurred in African American (38.2%) and Latino (23.5) MSM. Simultaneously, recent scholarship on minority MSM and HIV/AIDS reports a dearth of qualitative communication research that address this health issue. This manuscript reports a research study that seeks to fill this gap in health communication theory and praxis. Through in-depth interviews with 17 MSM of color, this article draws upon the culture-centered approach to demonstrate how cultural and contextual nuances, (in)access to structural resources, and participants’ agentive capacity to act upon available knowledge/resources influences the ways they manage (the threat of) HIV/AIDS.

Notes

¹ The term “men who have sex with men” (MSM) is a neutral term used by scholars and the CDC in HIV research and surveillance reports. The term is contingent on the behavior that transmits HIV and not related to how individuals self-identify in terms of their sexuality (CDC, 2010).

² Localocentric vocalizations refer to meanings of health and HIV/AIDS that are made and shared by cultural participants; these meanings are localized in the sense that they materialize through interactions between members of minority MSM groups and their cultural formulations such as negative perceptions about men who have sex with men, and available structural resources such as access to health services and basic necessities (see Basu, 2010; Dillon & Basu, 2014).