HIV prevention and the impact of It’s a Sin in Scotland

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

HIV prevention services across the United Kingdom received unprecedented requests for home testing kits following the airing of Russell T. Davies’s television series It’s a Sin (IAS) in January and February 2021. Professionals suggested a link between IAS’s retelling of AIDS crisis histories and people’s fears of ongoing HIV transmission, thus leading to increased online searches about HIV/AIDS. Little has been written about this impact of IAS on HIV health promotion practices specifically. Thus, in this article, I analyse a series of interviews with HIV health promoters in Scotland to detail how IAS has influenced HIV intervention techniques and health promotion strategies. I demonstrate how IAS provoked local and national dialogues about the contemporary context of HIV/AIDS in Scotland. I argue that it enabled conversations about the need for new media resources that accurately represent the specific and localized histories of HIV/AIDS. More directly, IAS in small part illuminated differences in intervention strategies between England and Scotland. Hence, it foregrounded the need for re-distributed institutional and material resources to streamline a Scottish agenda for ‘ending HIV’ by 2030.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)173-189
Number of pages18
JournalJournal of Popular Television
Volume11
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Jul 2023

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • It’s a Sin
  • cultural studies
  • health promotion
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Scotland
  • television

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