NGOs’ HIV/AIDS Discourse on Social Media and Websites: Technology Affordances and Strategic Communication Across Media Platforms

Authors

  • Jiawei Sophia Fu School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University
  • Renwen Zhang Northwestern University

Keywords:

affordances, HIV/AIDS, nongovernmental organization (NGO), semantic network analysis, information and communication technologies (ICTs), health communication, discourse, social media, China

Abstract

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play a pivotal role in combating HIV/AIDS. Yet research on the social construction of HIV/AIDS has investigated the discourse of the government, media, and the public but not NGOs. Drawing on the technology affordance framework, this study examines NGOs’ discourse on social media and websites in China to understand how they communicate HIV/AIDS issues. Results of semantic network analysis reveal overlapping themes about HIV/AIDS across social media and websites, including promoting public policy, public education, and social support. Additionally, NGOs leverage social media to mobilize various institutional and community health care resources and highlight their engagement with the government. This study underscores the pivotal role of NGOs in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and destigmatization. It also advances the technology affordance literature by shedding light on the convergent yet distinct affordances of different digital media for strategic health communication and the constraints of the sociopolitical context on organizations’ communicative practices.

Author Biographies

Jiawei Sophia Fu, School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University

Jiawei Sophia Fu is an assistant professor at the School of Communication and Informaiton of Rutgers Univeristy. Her research interests revolve around organizational communication, ICTs, social networks, and computational social science. Sophia’s work has appeared in peer-reviewed communication journals such as Journal of Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Information, Communication, & Society, and The Information Society. She has won awards for her research from the International Communication Association, Academy of Management, and National Science Foundation. 

Renwen Zhang, Northwestern University

Renwen Alice Zhang is a PhD student at the Media, Technology, and Society program of Northwestern University. Her research focuses on how technologies facilitate health behavior change and patient-provider communication. In particular, she is interested in the role of online health communities in helping patients obtain health information and social support. Her work has appeared in Information, Communication & Society, Telematics and Informatics, and Computers in Human Behavior. 

Downloads

Published

2019-01-03

Issue

Vol. 13 (2019)

Section

Articles

License

The International Journal of Communication is an academic journal. As such, it is dedicated to the open exchange of information. For this reason, IJoC is freely available to individuals and institutions. Copies of this journal or articles in this journal may be distributed for research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. However, commercial use of the IJoC website or the articles contained herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the editor. Authors who publish in The International Journal of Communication will release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given. For details of the rights authors grants users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.) This journal utilizes the LOCKSSsystem to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. The publisher perpetually authorizes participants in the LOCKSS system to archive and restore our publication through the LOCKSS System for the benefit of all LOCKSS System participants. Specifically participating libraries may:
  • Collect and preserve currently accessible materials;
  • Use material consistent with original license terms;
  • Provide copies to other LOCKSS appliances for purposes of audit and repair.
 

Fair Use

The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 specifies, in Section 107, the terms of the Fair Use exception: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; &
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. In accord with these provisions, the International Journal of Communication believes in the vigorous assertion and defense of Fair Use by scholars engaged in academic research, teaching and non-commercial publishing. Thus, we view the inclusion of “quotations” from existing print, visual, audio and audio-visual texts to be appropriate examples of Fair Use, as are reproductions of visual images for the purpose of scholarly analysis. We encourage authors to obtain appropriate permissions to use materials originally produced by others, but do not require such permissions as long as the usage of such materials falls within the boundaries of Fair Use.

The International Journal of Communication encourages authors to employ fair use in their scholarly publishing wherever appropriate. Fair use is the right to use unlicensed copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your own work, in some circumstances. We consult the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication, created by the International Communication Association and endorsed by the National Communication Association, and you should too. If you have any questions about whether fair use applies to your uses of copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your scholarship, simply include your rationale, grounded in the Best Practices, as a supplementary document with your submission.