Abstract
Taking into account that HIV/AIDS is highly stigmatized in Russia, online health communities play an important role in providing emotional and informational support to people living with HIV/AIDS. Online health communities can also be considered as an important way of data collection. The purpose of the study was to examine how people living with HIV/AIDS discuss in Internet disclosure of their HIV-status in the context of stigmatization. Data were collected through the web site “Forum for people living with HIV/AIDS”. The processing and analysis of data was carried out in QDAS NVivo. Interpretations of the disease, reported by forum users, vary from total rejection to attempts to justify themselves in front of others. The most negative response to disease reported by users is the concealment of one’s status from sexual partners. There are clearly manifested differences between people who have recently learned about their illness and those who have lived with HIV/AIDS for a long time and have developed some strategies for resistance to stigma and for coping with the disease. Based on the data analyzed, we can hypothesize that the more user perceive the illness as a “punishment” for inappropriate behavior the more difficulties she or he experiences with the disclosure of HIV status. The peer support plays an important role in the acceptance of status and in the reduction of internalized stigma.
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This work was supported by the Russian Fund for Basic Research [Grant Number 18-013-00726 A].
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Dudina, V., Tsareva, A. (2018). Studying Stigmatization and Status Disclosure Among People Living with HIV/AIDS in Russia Through Online Health Communities. In: Bodrunova, S. (eds) Internet Science. INSCI 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11193. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01437-7_2
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