Media coverage on AIDS pandemic shrinks, study finds A new international study has found that media coverage on HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome) in developed countries has shrunk by more than 70% in the last 20 years. The researchers say this is not a huge surprise since much progress... A new international study has found that media coverage on HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome) in developed countries has shrunk by more than 70% in the last 20 years. The researchers say this is not a huge surprise since much progress has been made in tackling the disease in these countries. However, they warn that as the vast majority of research into the disease takes place in the developed world, a lack of interest there may lessen work aimed at fighting the pandemic in developing countries. The findings are part of an ongoing study into sustainability-related media coverage worldwide by researchers from Germany, France, Ireland and the UK. The Trends in Sustainability project, led by the University of Leeds in the UK, Queen's University Belfast in Ireland, the Berlin-based Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) in Germany and Euromed Management in Marseille, France, reveals that an average of 1.5 articles linked to HIV/AIDS appeared in every issue of the main broadsheet newspapers in the early 1990s. But coverage levels have dropped since 2008, down to below 0.5 articles per newspaper issue. Coverage in French and US-based newspapers has dramatically decreased during this period as well. In the place of articles on HIV/AIDS, the researchers found that the coverage of sustainability-related issues had increased in the last two decades. But they noted that the coverage of environmental problems like acid rain and the ozone hole, which have been successfully addressed, has shrunk since the early 1990s. Articles on climate change meanwhile have increased more than 10-fold since this time, amounting to an average of more than 2 articles per newspaper issue across the overall sample of 115 newspapers. 'In recent years, climate change has emerged as a defining issue in the context of sustainability,' said Dr Ralf Barkemeyer from the University of Leeds. 'This globally important issue has been very successful in gaining general public acceptance of and attention to sustainability, but at the same time it may have significantly changed the sustainability agenda itself - possibly at the expense of attention to socioeconomic problems such as malaria and HIV/AIDS or even corruption, human rights or poverty.' According to Dr Barkemeyer, there had been a 'stark decline' on the coverage of all these issues in the media in recent years, 'in particular since early 2006 when media attention devoted to climate change started to pick up markedly'. For his part, Professor Frank Figge from Queen's University Management School Belfast said: 'HIV/AIDS has emerged as a key issue that increasingly tends to be treated with neglect by newspapers based in the developed north', a fact that 'does not necessarily come as a surprise, as the remarkable progress that has been made in tackling HIV/AIDS has also largely been restricted to the wealthy north. So, the problem itself has shifted towards the global south'. The researchers noted that 'attention levels in areas that are hit hardest by the AIDS pandemic - such as South Africa - have remained at a high level or even increased throughout the last 20 years.' But they suggested that the lack of media coverage of HIV/AIDS in the western world could 'hamper the advance of solutions for the spreading pandemic in developing countries, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa' as the 'vast majority of research into HIV/AIDS takes place in the developed world'. Dr Tobias Hahn of the Euromed Management said climate change and sustainability issues were not the only issues that had taken the spotlight away from HIV/AIDS. 'Over the last 10 years, the threat posed by international terrorism also appears to have crowded out most of the set of 20 sustainability-related issues we have analysed in US-based newspapers. The global recession certainly hasn't helped in terms of public attention to HIV/AIDS, either.' Countries Germany, France, Ireland, United Kingdom
