Digital News and HIV Criminalization: The Social Organization of Convergence Journalism (Institutional Ethnography)

By: Colin Hastings

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Synopsis: For years, HIV activists and researchers have expressed deep concerns about the stigmatizing and sensational tone of news stories about HIV criminalization. Digital News and HIV Criminalization investigates the everyday work of journalists and uncovers how newswork routines are hooked into other institutions, including the criminal legal system, police, and public health, that regulate the daily lives of people living with HIV. This lively institutional ethnography offers key insights into how the digital news media ecosystem is socially organized. It reveals that the fast-paced conditions of digital news media in the age of convergence journalism require the constant, rapid production of sensational news stories that will be consumed widely by online audiences, often resulting in news writing that perpetuates social harms connected to stigmatizing, racist, and anti-immigrant views. The book illustrates how biased reporting on HIV criminalization reflects broader trends in online news and presents opportunities for HIV activists to form coalitions with other groups negatively affected by the current landscape of convergence journalism. Tracing how work that produces and circulates a standard genre of news story about HIV criminalization is coordinated across time and space, Digital News and HIV Criminalization offers a groundwork for political action aimed at disrupting the production of stigmatizing news stories.