United States: Reaching New Audiences through New Media

To extend the reach of its HIV/AIDS-related programs, the federal government is increasingly using the Internet and other cutting-edge media. The government's new media campaign—notably in evidence during the 20th World AIDS Day on December 1—reflects the government's recognition that many of the people most at risk of HIV are turning to the Web for health information.

New media has "astronomical" potential to strengthen the government's health programs, says Miguel Gomez, director of the AIDS.gov project within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of HIV/AIDS Policy. Gomez's office has been in the vanguard among federal agencies in using new media for HIV information communication.

On World AIDS Day, for example, a blog that is one initiative of Gomez's agency called users of Internet social networking sites to action—to help reduce stigma and promote HIV testing—through the "Facing AIDS" campaign. "Take a photo of yourself wearing a red ribbon" and post it online, the blog urged. Red ribbons are meant to evoke the risks of AIDS and underscore the importance of testing for HIV that causes it.

World AIDS Day has been an annual event since 1988. Last year marked the first time that the government has orchestrated the cooperation of bloggers and social-website users to provide high-tech punch to the day's activities.

The blog (http://blog.AIDS.gov) that issued the red-ribbon appeal is one facet of a new media approach that the Office of HIV/AIDS Policy in HHS is pursuing in response to the epidemic. John Snow, Inc. (JSI), a public health consulting organization based in Boston, assists HHS in operating the blog and developing a new media strategy.

How AIDS is impacting different demographic groups was also the subject of an AIDS.gov blog post on August 6 of last year. The CDC had released new HIV-incidence data showing that in this country there were 56,300 new infections in 2006, up sharply from the previous estimate of 40,000. The data indicated more glaringly than ever that African-Americans, Hispanics and men having sex with men were disproportionately at risk for developing new infections. A new media approach is seen as a particularly critical additional tool in reaching these communities. Communities of color and MSM are prominent among the fast-growing number of Americans who access the Internet and other new media for health information.

AIDS.gov serves as a gateway for Federal information about the prevention, testing, treatment, and care of HIV and AIDS. Further, AIDS.gov provides info including nuts-and-bolts pointers on how organizations can use new media tools in response to HIV. The popularity of the HHS blog (http://blog.AIDS.gov) has been rapidly growing since its debut in January 2008 and typically draws about 2,000 visitors a month.

Starting in November, the blog urged people to post ribbon-displaying photos of themselves on Internet sites, such as Facebook and Flickr. The red-ribbon initiative was one feature of a HHS campaign to publicize and observe World AIDS Day and, beyond any one event, to harness the Internet and other new media tools to raise awareness of HIV.

In December 2006, Gomez launched AIDS.gov as the first step in the department's effort to create an online space in response to HIV and AIDS. "It's our obligation that we are online," he says, noting that his agency sponsors the blog, along with podcasts and other Internet-based outreach, to give people on the Web information in the formats they want.

All told, propelled by the snowball effect of new media, AIDS.gov's World AIDS Day efforts reached at least an estimated 208,297. A Facebook group created in recognition of the event, for example, attracted 722 people, many of whom embraced the red-ribbon theme in one form or another, and each of whom is networked through Facebook to friends that in many cases number in the hundreds. The Facebook group page included links to online discussion groups and informational websites about HIV and AIDS.

Further, 179 people posted ribbon-bearing photos or other HIV-related material to a similar group on Flickr, the image-sharing website. One of the Flickr photos showed a red-lit Empire State Building, whose top floors were illuminated in that hue to commemorate World AIDS Day.

Requesting that bloggers devote their postings on December 1 to the subject of HIV was another thrust of AIDS.gov's World AIDS Day campaign. AIDS.gov and JSI joined with the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Prevention and Blog Catalog, an online social network for bloggers, in that initiative. Notices went to bloggers in an e-mail blitz and an invitation issued by Blog Catalog.

Hundreds of blogs, including those of AIDS service organizations and people living with AIDS or HIV, noted this year's World AIDS Day. The postings often contained links to related websites, multiplying their impact.

Besides summoning bloggers on December 1, the JSI-AIDS.gov team took part in the inauguration of Karuna, a HIV-specific space, or "island," in the virtual world called Second Life. (The island's name is derived from an early Indo-Aryan word connoting wellbeing and happiness.)

That day, Gomez of HHS gave a presentation about the demographic profile and other aspects of the epidemic. He appeared as an avatar, an icon showing a facsimile of him as a "skinny bald man wearing a conservative suit and a red ribbon," as he recalls, joining other avatars who talked about their personal experiences with HIV.

Besides blogging and supporting AIDS-related events in other ways, the Office of HIV/AIDS Policy and JSI also respond to requests from other federal agencies, including the Department of the Treasury and the Indian Health Service, for advice and technical assistance on using new media tools.

The HHS emphasis on using new media in response to AIDS has been in tune with elements of the new media strategy that the Barack Obama's presidential campaign employed with extraordinary success to raise money and built grassroots support. Obama's aides say, moreover, that they will exploit many of the same technologies to help his administration govern effectively.

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