Framing HIV/AIDS: A Longitudinal Study of Chinese Wire News From 1985 to 2012

• In Event: Health News: Autism, Hep B, HIV

Abstract

This study examined the news coverage of HIV/AIDS by the Chinese government-controlled Xinhua News Agency from the beginning of the disease reported in China to 2012 over a time-span of 28 years. By dividing the 28 years into three stages based on the time when the important government AIDS prevention policy came out, this study found that the Chinese government-controlled news agency paid more attention to HIV/AIDS during 1996-2003, while after 2003 the Chinese media showed fatigue in reporting the disease. This study also examined four news frames applied in the AIDS stories from Xinhua wire news. It found that the Xinhua wire news was more likely to frame the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a disease in foreign countries and applied more thematic frames than episodic frames during the 28 years of coverage. The affected social groups and dominant themes in the Xinhua wire news, however, varied in the three stages.

Author

• Jing Su, Indiana University