“Live and Let Live”: An Analysis of HIV/AIDS-Related Stigma and Discrimination in International Campaign Posters

Abstract

As a corollary to The Declaration of Commitment adopted by the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June 2001, UNAIDS developed a World AIDS Campaign that sought to eradicate HIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination. The campaign incorporated several educational strategies, including a poster campaign that advocated the just and equal treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS. In an effort to develop an understanding of these educational efforts, this study deconstructs the 2002–2003 World AIDS Campaign posters. While the overall results suggest that the campaign has been successful in redefining images of HIV/AIDS, they also show that certain aspects of these posters may actually serve to reinforce stigma and discrimination. Using a visual studies approach to textual analysis, this study explores the underlying ideological and cultural assumptions that exist within the posters and provides a method for evaluating such materials.

We gratefully acknowledge UNAIDS for permission to reproduce the images used in this article.

Notes

¹The reader can view the full range of images at the following website: http://www.unaids.org/wac/2002/posters_1.html

²The data for this study were first analysed as part of research for a master' thesis Johnny (2003).

³For a more extensive discussion of denotative and connotative analysis see also Weber, S., & Mitchell, C. (2004). Visual artistic modes of representation for self-study. In J. Loughran, M. Hamilton, V. Laboskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. New York: Kluwer Press.

⁴We include here a short description of each of the categories as drawn from the work of Frith (1998), Emmison and Smith (2000), and Wileman (1993). Surface meaning refers to the overall impressions that one may have from quickly studying an advertisement or visual message. Frith affirms that generally most readers spend 3.2 seconds interpreting advertisements. As a result, the surface meaning is often somewhat shallow. Frith then goes on to suggest that the researcher can uncover the surface meaning of a visual text by simply listing all the objects and people that are in it.

Narrative, visual images can often tell a story either through a succession of pictures or a frozen scenario that allows the viewer to imagine what has happened to the characters within the picture. We applied the narrative concept in the analysis to determine what types of stories are associated with images of HIV/AIDS.

Intended meaning, as explained by Frith, describes the expected meaning as one that the designer intends for the audience to take with them. In relation to HIV/AIDS campaigns, the message may be one that is about healthy lifestyles, such as safe sex practices, or it may try to associate the virus with certain attitudes or behaviours.

Ideological meaning refers to the values that are expressed in a visual text. The ideological meaning may be decoded by examining the underlying assumptions and implications that an advertisement or campaign message possesses. Frith, for example, discusses the ideological assumptions of a laundry soap advertisement and suggests that running such an ad in a woman's magazine implies that laundry is woman's work. In our work we questioned who was portrayed as the main perpetrators of stigma and how more subtle ideological values might be expressed in these campaigns.

Oppositional reading is the process of uncovering alternative interpretations of a text, ones that differ from the intended or preferred meaning. It was important for us to use this concept because individuals will frequently read the same image differently depending upon their background, life experiences and subject positions. Examining the campaign posters from various angles permitted us to gauge how different audiences might interpret the campaign posters and how the images might send inconsistent messages that unwittingly serve to reproduce HIV/AIDS-related stigma.

Clarity refers to the ease of interpretation that is associated with a visual message. For example, as pointed out by Wileman, visual images should be easy to read and to the point. This concept was used to determine if the intended message could be easily understood by the audience. We considered how the images and symbols in HIV/AIDS posters might be understood within different cultures.

Unity questions the compositional value of a visual. As noted by Wileman, if words are used to anchor an image, it must be clear which words go with a particular picture. We examined the unity of the posters in order to determine if the text added to the clarity and possible interpretations of the campaign message.

⁵See Ford, Odallo, and Chorlton (2003). A good example of the application of their research to stigma and HIV/AIDS can be seen in the work of Stuart (2004) with beginning teachers in South Africa.