Cross-National Coverage of HIV/AIDS: A Community Structure Approach

Abstract

Community structure analysis compared cross-national coverage of responsibility to fight HIV/AIDS in newspapers in 18 countries, selecting articles of 250+ words from May 7, 2003, to September 13, 2013. The resulting 291 articles were coded for “prominence” and “direction” (“government,” “society,” including nongovernmental organizations [NGOs]/foreign aid or “balanced/neutral” coverage), and combined for composite scores in each newspaper's “Media Vector” (range = .4974 to −.1465). Newspaper support for governmental versus societal involvement was 9 to 9 (50/50). Pearson correlations revealed significant relationships in privilege and vulnerability categories: public knowledge of HIV/AIDS preventative measures and general health of the population. Regression of national characteristics against Media Vectors yielded percentage of women who know condom use prevents HIV (63.7% of variance), percentage of men who know condom use prevents HIV, and percentage of population undernourished, collectively totaling 84.8% of variance, all correlated with support for government intervention. A second regression analysis excluding self-report variables found that “% population undernourished” and “% females in the workforce” (combined 52.8% of variance) were linked to coverage supporting government responsibility. “AIDS incidence” (13.6% of variance) was linked to support for “societal” intervention. Most of the variance was linked to coverage supporting government responsibility for HIV/AIDS.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

A previous version of this article was presented at the biannual University of Kentucky Conference on Health Communication, April 12, 2014.