Institutional Repository

The story of an immune deficiency disease and its representation in the South African print media (1981-2000)

Show simple item record

dc.contributor.advisor Naidoo, K. (Dr.) en
dc.contributor.advisor Makhanya, Mandla en
dc.contributor.author Mathebe, Lucky en
dc.date.accessioned 2009-08-25T11:04:23Z
dc.date.available 2009-08-25T11:04:23Z
dc.date.issued 2005-07-31
dc.date.submitted 2009-08-25T11:04:23Z en
dc.identifier.citation Mathebe, Lucky (2005) The story of an immune deficiency disease and its representation in the South African print media (1981-2000), University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/2529> en
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10500/2529
dc.description.abstract This study explores the multiple ways in which Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) functioned through concrete biomedical institutions, namely, the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the World Health Organization (WHO). AIDS is viewed as a product of the full range of institutional practices in which it became embedded and in which it was set within the boundaries of Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease (see the Preface section). This biomedical model of disease was materialized through journalistic practices and sold as news. Within these operative terms can be understood another analytical strategy that also designates the main domain of my study of this contemporary social form: I argue in this thesis that knowledge about AIDS was by no means dependent solely on the objective, scientifically determined, "received narrative" of biomedicine; what is today known as AIDS is also a product of a wide range of social practices produced and reproduced over time and space. AIDS is also an outcome of the resolutions, judgements and decisions that working journalists made over time in terms of what they generated or covered as news; the disease is also product of a large assortment of representational mirrors that I call `authentic voices', to take as good examples, the "narrative of moral protest", the narrative of a "homosexual disease", the narrative of a "heterosexual disease," and the narrative of a "modern-day Black Death" (plague). The story of AIDS in the media can also be seen to be defined by the proliferation of these authentic voices. From this reading, the distinctive trait of AIDS in the media lies in the fact that it is a constructed object, a disease framed through a specific structure of meanings. When we look at these structure of meanings we find that their moral and cultural assumptions and stereotypical connotations embody certain aspects of the organism of the society within which they were created and nourished over a much longer history. en
dc.format.extent 1 online resource (xxvi, 378 leaves) en
dc.language.iso en en
dc.subject Media representations en
dc.subject Homosexuality en
dc.subject Narratives en
dc.subject Morality en
dc.subject Stereotyping en
dc.subject Redemption en
dc.subject Resource mobilization en
dc.subject Biomedical model en
dc.subject 'AIDS in Africa' en
dc.subject Black Death en
dc.subject HIV/AIDS en
dc.subject 'AIDS Babies' en
dc.subject 'AIDS Orphans' en
dc.subject.ddc 362.19697920968
dc.subject.lcsh AIDS (Disease) -- South Africa en
dc.subject.lcsh HIV infections -- South Africa en
dc.subject.lcsh AIDS (Disease) in mass media en
dc.title The story of an immune deficiency disease and its representation in the South African print media (1981-2000) en
dc.type Thesis en
dc.description.department Sociology en
dc.description.degree D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology) en


Files in this item

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record

Search UnisaIR


Browse

My Account

Statistics