Doctoral Dissertation Research - AIDS Streetscapes: The Imagery of Campaigns against HIV in Chicago and Accra

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AIDS Streetscapes: The Imagery of Campaigns against HIV from Chicago to AccraAIDS organizations across the globe attempt to persuade people to change belief and behavior - visually - through AIDS posters, billboards, bumper-stickers, t-shirts, and print advertisements. This dissertation examines the production and reception of visual AIDS campaigns of the urban streetscapes of Chicago and Accra, Ghana. As the most common mode of communication between AIDS organizations and local communities, these visual campaigns mediate between the expert knowledge of public health officials and the folk knowledge of local groups. Understanding the interpretive practices in which both producers and audiences engage will provide fundamental insights into which symbolic strategies prove most effective. Attending to the connections between each element of Griswold's (1987, 1994) "cultural diamond," this project uses organizational ethnography, focus group interviews, GIS mapping technology, and content analysis to assess the production, reception, and dissemination of AIDS campaigns, and to develop a typology of AIDS symbols. This research asks the question, "how do AIDS images within urban streetscapes of Chicago and Accra make certain ideas about HIV knowable, while discouraging others?" Examining the links between visual culture and the social pathology of AIDS, with a focus on meaning and interpretation, will contribute to cultural sociology, visual sociology, and the sociology of knowledge. Assessing visual AIDS campaigns also contributes to the fight against HIV. Since the beginning of the crisis, organizations have peppered the urban landscape with images of AIDS, but very little research has systematically addressed these visual AIDS campaigns across urban space. By examining both the production and reception of these images, this project correlates between intended and actual effects. Data collected from focus groups across audiences, will allow for a deep and nuanced understanding of mechanisms of communication about HIV. The results from this dissertation will find an audience with AIDS organizations and public health policy makers. This research hopes to identify those visual strategies that work best, in a variety of environments and with different messages. Federal, State and local agencies, along with AIDS organizations in the private sector will use these findings to better communicate to citizens and mobilize people against the AIDS crisis.