Antiviral marketing: The informationalization of HIV prevention

Abstract

Background Leveraging the affordances of technology to enhance human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention efforts has become an increasing public health priority. Grounded in a case study examining the role of networked information technologies in reshaping the HIV prevention landscape for gay men in San Francisco and Vancouver, this article proposes that HIV prevention has become informationalized. Analysis The informationalization of HIV prevention is a convergent and participatory process where networked information technologies not only mediate but also produce HIV risk subjectivities, discourses, and practices in ambivalent ways. Conclusion and implications This article argues that although informationalization creates many important opportunities to revitalize HIV prevention, the binary logic of data and code can unwittingly reproduce hierarchies of guilt/innocence and perpetrator/victim that pose challenges for community-based HIV advocacy efforts.