The Discourse of HIV/AIDS in China: News Construction and Representation of the Chinese HIV Blood Scandal (1998-2002).

On August 23rd 2001, the Chinese government broke its reticence on the subject of AIDS, admitting that 30,000-50,000 Chinese people could have been infected with HIV through illegal blood collections and sales. Although considerable amount of media coverage of this issue has been released, there is no doubt that Chinese government has thrown great efforts to seal this HIV blood scandal up. In this study, I analyze 62 news stories from three major newspapers of China in order to display: (1) how the Chinese news media construct and represent the HIV blood scandal; and (2) how the media discourse about the HIV scandal interacts with social and political context of contemporary Chinese society. By using discourse analysis, I find that: (1) the coverage of the HIV scandal reflects various social problems during the process of modernization, such as the ineffectiveness of Chinese public health policies; (2) an ideological constrain imposed by the Chinese Communism Party decide that it is hard for the Chinese news media to play the role as efficient communication channels to convey health information. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]