The popular press is an important forum for communicating messages and meanings about health risks. This paper examines new reports of AIDS published in the Australian metropolitan press in late 1986 and early 1987. This period was chosen because it marked a change in news representations of AIDS from a disease of the deviant and (primarily) homosexual Other to a disease of the heterosexual Self. The discussion examines some of the discursive devices used in headlines, editorials and the main body of news texts to represent AIDS as a threat to heterosexuals. The dominant ideologies, narratives and discourses contributing to press accounts of AIDS risk and heterosexuality are identified, including victim blaming, public health paternalism, risk discourse, Judeo-Christian religion and sexuality, the moral meanings of disease and fin de millénium discourse.
Altman, D. (1986) AIDS and the New Puritanism. London: Pluto.
2.
Astroff, R.J. and Nyberg, A.K. (1992) `Discursive Hierarchies and the Construction of Crisis in the News: A Case Study', Discourse & Society3(1): 5-23.
3.
Bell, P. (1985) `Drugs and the Media', Australian Alcohol/Drug Review4: 235-242.
4.
Berridge, V. (1991) `AIDS, the Media and Health Policy', Health Education Journal50(4): 179-185.
5.
Brandt, A. (1985) No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880. New York: Oxford University Press.
6.
Brandt, A.M. (1988) `AIDS and Metaphor: Toward the Social Meaning of Epidemic Disease', Social Research55(3): 413-432.
7.
Bray, F. and Chapman, S. (1991) `Community Knowledge, Attitudes and Media Recall about AIDS: Results of Two Telephone Surveys, Sydney 1988 and 1989', Australian Journal of Public Health15: 107-113.
8.
Check, W.A. (1987) `Beyond the Political Model of Reporting: Nonspecific Symptoms in Media Communication about AIDS', Reviews of Infectious Diseases9(5): 987-1000.
9.
Clarke, J.N. (1991) `Media Portrayal of Disease from the Medical, Political Economy, and Life-Style Perspectives', Qualitative Health Research1(3): 287-308.
10.
Crawford, R. (1977) `You are Dangerous to Your Health: The Ideology and Politics of Victim Blaming', International Journal of Health Services7(4): 663-680.
11.
Crimp, D. (1992) `Portraits of People with AIDS', in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P.A. Treichler (eds) Cultural Studies, pp. 117-130. New York: Routledge.
12.
Dada, M. (1990) `Race and the AIDS Agenda', in T. Boffin and S. Gupta (eds) Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the AIDS Mythology, pp. 85-95. London: Rivers Oram Press.
13.
Davenport-Hines, R. (1990) Sex, Death and Punishment: Attitudes to Sex and Sexuality in Britain since the Renaissance. London: Collins.
14.
Douglas, M. (1985) Risk Acceptability According to the Social Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
15.
Douglas, M. (1990) `Risk as a Forensic Resource', Daedalus, Fall: 1-16.
16.
Douglas, M. and Wildavsky, A. (1982) Risk and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
17.
Fabrega, H. and Manning, P. (1972) `Disease, Illness and Deviant Careers', in R. Scott and J. Douglas (eds) Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance, pp. 93-116. New York: Basic Books.
18.
Fairclough, N. (1992) `Discourse and Text: Linguistic and Intertextual Analysis within Discourse Analysis', Discourse & Society3(2): 193-217.
19.
Foucault, M. (1978) The History of Sexuality: Volume 1. An Introduction, trans. R. Hurley. London: Penguin.
20.
Fowler, R. (1991) Language in the News. London: Routledge.
21.
French, R. (1986) `Mossies Could Spread AIDS': Australian Media References on AIDS, 1981-1985. Sydney: Gay Media Group.
22.
Hammonds, E. (1986) `Race, Sex, AIDS: The Construction of “Other” ', Radical America20(6): 28-36.
23.
Herzlich, C. and Pierret, J. (1989) `The Construction of a Social Phenomenon: AIDS in the French Press', Social Science and Medicine29(11): 1235-1242.
24.
Jones, J.W. (1992) `Discourses on and of AIDS in West Germany, 1986-90', Journal of the History of Sexuality2(3): 439-468.
25.
Juhasz, A. (1990) `The Contained Threat: Women in Mainstream AIDS Documentary', Journal of Sex Research27(1): 25-46.
26.
King, D. (1990) ` “Prostitutes as Pariah in the Age of AIDS”: A Content Analysis of Coverage of Women Prostitutes in the New York Times and the Washington Post September 1985-April 1988', Women and Health16(3/4): 155-176.
27.
Klaidman, S. (1990) `How Well the Media Report Health Risk', Daedalus, Fall: 119-132.
28.
Kroker, A. and Kroker, M. (1988) `Panic Sex in America', in A. Kroker and M. Kroker (eds) Body Invaders: Sexuality and the Postmodern Condition, pp. 1-18. London: Macmillan Education.
29.
Lorber, J. (1972) `Deviance as Performance in the Case of Illness', in E. Friedson and J. Lorber (eds) Medical Men and Their Work, pp. 414-424. Chicago, IL: Aldine.
30.
Lupton, D. (1991a) `A Changing Discourse: AIDS in the Australian Press, 1986-1990', National AIDS Bulletin5(8): 25-27.
31.
Lupton, D. (1991b) `Apocalypse to Banality: Changes in Metaphors about AIDS in the Australian Press', Australian Journal of Communication18(2): 66-74.
32.
Lupton, D. (1992) `From Complacency to Panic: AIDS and Heterosexuals in the Australian Press, July 1986 to June 1988', Health Education Research: Theory and Practice7(1): 9-20.
33.
Lupton, D. (in press) `Risk as Moral Danger: The Social and Political Functions of Risk Discourse in Public Health', International Journal of Health Services.
34.
Lupton, D. and Chapman, S. (1991) `Death of a Heart Surgeon: Reflections on Press Accounts of the Murder of Victor Chang', British Medical Journal303: 1583-1586.
35.
Lupton, D. , Chapman, S. and Wong, W.L. (1993) `Back to Complacency: AIDS in the Australian Press, March to September 1990', Health Education Research: Theory and Practice8(1): 15-17.
36.
Martin, E. (1990) `Toward an Anthropology of Immunology: The Body as Nation State', Medical Anthropology Quarterly4(4): 410-426.
37.
Meyers, J. (1985) Disease and the Novel, 1880-1960. London: Macmillan.
38.
Nelkin, D. (1987) Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology. New York: W.H. Freeman.
39.
O'Neill, J. (1990) `AIDS as a Globalizing panic', Theory, Culture & Society7: 329-342.
40.
Oppenheimer, G.M. (1988) `In the Eye of the Storm: The Epidemiological Construction of AIDS', in E. Fee and D.M. Fox (eds) AIDS: The Burdens of History, pp. 267-300. Berkeley: University of California Press.
41.
Parker, I. (1992) Discourse Dynamics: Critical Analysis for Social and Individual Psychology. London: Routledge.
42.
Parsons, T. (1951) The Social System. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
43.
Patton, C. (1990) Inventing AIDS. London: Routledge.
44.
Potter, J. , Wetherell, M. and Chitty, A. (1991) `Quantification Rhetoric—Cancer on Television', Discourse & Society2(3): 333-365.
45.
Rhodes, T. and Shaughnessy, R. (1990) `Compulsory Screening: Advertising AIDS in Britain, 1986-89'. Policy and Politics18(1): 55-61.
46.
Sontag, S. (1989) Illness as Metaphor/AIDS and Its Metaphors. New York: Anchor.
47.
Stallings, R.A. (1990) `Media Discourse and the Social Construction of Risk', Social Problems37(1): 80-95.
48.
Treichler, P. (1989) `AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification', in D. Crimp (ed.) AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism, pp. 31-70. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
49.
Turner, B.A. (1984) The Body and Society. New York: Blackwell.
50.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1984) Prejudice in Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
51.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1991) Racism and the Press. London: Routledge.
52.
Watney, S. (1987) Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS and the Media. London: Comedia.
53.
Watney, S. (1989a) `Taking Liberties: An Introduction', in E. Carter and S. Watney, (eds) Taking Liberties, pp. 11-57. London: Serpent's Tail.
54.
Watney, S. (1989b) `The Subject of AIDS', in P. Aggleton, G. Hart and P. Davies, (eds) AIDS: Social Representations, Social Practices, pp. 64-73. Basingstoke: Falmer.
55.
Watney, S. (1991) `AIDS and Language', National AIDS Bulletin5(4): 23-25.
56.
Weeks, J. (1986) Sexuality. London: Tavistock.
57.
Wellings, K. (1985) `Help or Hype: An Analysis of Media Coverage of the 1983 “Pill Scare” ', in D. Leathar, G.B. Hastings, K. O'Reillyet al. (eds) Health Education and the Media II, pp. 109-115. Oxford: Pergamon.
58.
Wellings, K. (1988) `Perceptions of Risk—Media Treatment of AIDS', in P. Aggleton and H. Homans (eds) Social Aspects of AIDS, pp. 83-105. Basingstoke: Falmer.
