"We" And "Others": The Identity Construction From Chinese And American Coverages On AIDS

In the early 1980s, an unknown virus began to attack people. It is difficult to figure out the cause, and certainly to heal. This horrific disease, in medicine, was lately defined as Acquire Immunodeficiency Syndrome, AIDS for short. In the development of human history, once a person gets ill, he would be destined to not only suffer physical pain, but also burdened with more moral disapproval and condemnation. The appearance of AIDS makes this situation more serious.AIDS has been powerfully attacking the whole world since the first case of HIV infection was found in 1981. Even in the 21st century, the threat to people is increasingly powerful. People are afraid of hearing of or talking anything about AIDS, whose negative effect is much more serious than any disease. In this series of problems about AIDS, how have them been reported by the media? How have the HIV/AID sufferers been portrayed by the mainstream media? And how have their portrayals been changed over the past 29 years?Through the content and discourse analyses of AIDS coverages in Southern Weekly and New York Times from 1981 to 2009, this thesis explains and analyses the image construction of people living with HIV/AIDS. It will explore whether the marginalized people are constructed as a part of us or excluded from our group? The purpose of the thesis is to reflect the social-cultural causes and effect mechanism behind the image of AIDS suffers constructed by the media.The research shows that in the coverages on AIDS issue, both Chinese and American mainstream media construct and portray AIDS in a strong voice. During the past 29 years, every conversion of AIDS coverage has a high concordance with the change of the government's public policy. The media portray the same picture about AIDS, that is, from "stigmatization" to "out of media's stigmatization"Through the analysis of AIDS in the coverages of "Southern Weekly", the thesis finds out that the coverages went over four stages in the past 25 years. That is from the silence to the construction of others, and then at present "Southern Weekly' has focused on the people living with HIV/AIDS from the perspective of "health communication". It is not directly visible that the identity of HIV/AIDS sufferers are constructed as the other, but the deep morality colour still exists.In those 29 years, "New York Times" also has different stages. The initial coverages of "New York Times" were mainly about the domestic HIV/AIDS sufferers, and gave them a lable, called "homosexuality" by which the foreign HIV/AIDS sufferers were then labled. The identity of "victims" was constructed as well. Now "New York Times" changes the range and the subject of their coverages, that is. the coverages pay more attention not only to this special group, but also to the nongovernmental groups, which spread the voice of the people living with HIV/AIDS and all the support and love from the public. Finally, the thesis attempts to analyse the underlying causes of identity construction on HIV suffers, through comparing the different state systems and cultural backgrounds between China and America.