Popular media for HIV/AIDS prevention? Comparing two comics: Kingo and the Sara Communication Initiative

Abstract

This paper draws attention to some assumptions implicit in HIV/AIDS communication or prevention campaigns which use popular culture media, in this instance comics. Theoretically the analysis is placed in a framework of popular culture as the arena of negotiations about claims over hegemonic discourses. Methodologically the internal logics of a local Swahili comic from the magazine Kingo and of a comic from the Sara Initiative in Swahili (UNICEF-ESARO) are explored through a comparative textual analysis, focusing on differences and convergences in the use of dramaturgy and characterisation of the protagonists. The transformations of locally known comic characters and the differences in dramaturgical strategies are made visible in the comparison, exposing the communicative, historical and social underpinnings of both comics. It is argued that as long as these preconditions of the international campaigns, as well as of local popular culture production are not thoroughly explored, hegemonic Western claims of knowledge of HIV/AIDS will be rejected by African people (and why not?). The paper recommends that prevention design allow for ‘moments of freedom’ understood ‘as the potential to transform one's thoughts, emotions and experience into creations that can be communicated and shared’ (Fabian 1998).