Signifying Aids: How media use metaphors to define a disease

Abstract

ABSTRACTHIV is still one of the biggest public health challenges in Tanzania. The media play an important role in keeping the public updated about this issue. Aids’ invasive traits and infectious viruses have been systematically metaphorised to communicate complex information in simple terms over the past three decades. Even though metaphors are present in our everyday speech, when applied to illness and science, the consequences can have a ripple effect if misused. Employing semiotic analysis, this study explores how the Tanzanian media use metaphors and related imagery to report on HIV/Aids. The results indicate that the use of war metaphors, accompanied by photographs mostly featuring men, vivifies the HIV/Aids epidemic and valourises the stakeholders who engage in battling the ‘virus’. These stakeholders include government officials, international donors and heterosexual men, and exclude women and other disenfranchised groups such as homosexuals and the elderly.