HIV/AIDS communication through televised public service announcement in the Tamil language

Abstract

In HIV/AIDS communication, gender defines how programmes respond to the needs of both men and women. Supportive environments should be created to have enough means of protection against the disease, besides care, when infected. The research methods adopted for this study is discourse analysis of ‘Pulli Raja’, televised public service announcement (PSA) on HIV/AIDS. The study has taken a televised PSA in the Tamil language, adapted from the Hindi language. In HIV/AIDS communication, televised PSA is an important tool in educating and creating awareness among women. The research is based on ‘Pulli Raja’ PSA, brought forth on HIV/AIDS in the last two decades. Discourse analysis helps to understand the media text, context, gender, character portrayal, location and the target audience. Health belief model is adopted to understand the psychological health behaviour change.