The Impact of the Media Discourse on Subjective Barriers in the HIV/AIDS Prevention among Youth in Russia

The given Master’s thesis attempts to identify relation between subjective barriers to testing among youth and media discourse on the HIV issue. Due to the fact that HIV-infecting of young people is growing the focus will be on this group. From the functioning of two flows such as government efforts with the course on preventive measures and media streams, a kind of puzzle arise. Hypothesis is as follows: media discourse includes inconsistent agenda towards HIV prevention/ testing among young people. Empirical part of the work was based on content-analysis of the online content and the data on ‘HIV test’ inquiry from "Medialogia". One of important result that along with other actors contributing to formation of subjective barriers state course in the field of HIV prevention plays an important role. One of the ways to overcome this situation is to move accents from problematization to positive results. It will give the possibility to change media discourses and their components which bear negative associations.