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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
"HIV/AIDS on Television: 'Beat It!' and New Forms of Health Citizenship in South Africa"
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33. Visualizing Africa, from there to here, between now and then.
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| Paper ID | 340 |
| Author(s) |
Hodes, Rebecca Jane
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The first series of ‘Beat It!’ was screened on South African national television in 1999. A magazine show ‘for everyone living with HIV and AIDS, our partners, families and colleagues’, ‘Beat It!’ is closely aligned with the Treatment Action Campaign. The producers and participants have used the mass medium of television in order to extend social messages about HIV/AIDS to a wide audience. In the absence of a concerted government education campaign, ‘Beat It!’ has played a fundamental role in public education about the disease and its prevention—but more significantly its treatment. This paper analyses the programme’s popularization of new forms of health citizenship relating to the AIDS pandemic in South Africa, and traces the evolution of social, political and medical content over its six years of public broadcast. |
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