AIDS Education Online: Institutional Practice and Touch Screen Therapeutic Reflections

Conference: 11th International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and Society and the Technology, Knowledge and Society knowledge community

Dates: 23-24 February 2015

Abstract:

The paper explores the potential use of online new media, with regards to AIDS education, relating issues of participatory culture. Offering a textual analysis, which frames current media practice, a key point of concern is to consider how health educators (such as Avert and The Terrence Higgins Trust) integrate educational policies, within their online content, in relation to the adherence of ‘best practice’. Also contemporary touch screen technology is explored, considering new scope for therapeutic engagement, which might stimulate AIDS education.

However AIDS education online is often framed within neoliberal contexts, such as prioritizing the hierarchy on Anglo centric discourse, and the requirement of certain levels of media literacy. This is particularly evident in a lack of software designed within smart phone and tablet media platforms, relating AIDS education that might speak to disenfranchised potential media users.

Hence, this paper explores the limitation of AIDS education and it problematic relationship to transnational boundaries, which might prioritize English language reading skills. At the same time it considers new possible strategies that might reach diverse e-learning audiences and consumers, relative to participatory culture, and the significance of self-reflexive therapeutic forms, rather than purely didactic educational processes. The paper explores the potential use of online new media, with regards to AIDS education, considering institutional practice, in relation to contemporary potential within touch screen based technologies.

Source: Manual