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#HIV: Alignment of HIV-Related Visual Content on Instagram with Public Health Priorities in the US

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Abstract

Instagram, with more than 1 billion monthly users, is the go-to social media platform to chronicle one’s life via images, but how are people using the platform to present visual content about HIV? We analyzed public Instagram posts containing the hashtag “#HIV” (because they are self-tagged as related to HIV) between January 2017 and July 2018. We described the prevalence of co-occurring hashtags and explored thematic concepts in the images using automated image recognition and topic modeling. Twenty-eight percent of all #HIV posts included hashtags focused on awareness, followed by LGBTQ (24.5%) and living with HIV (17.9%). However, specific strategies were rarely cited, including testing (10.8%), treatment (10.3%), PrEP (6.2%) and condoms (4.1%). Image analyses revealed 44.5% of posts included infographics followed by people (21.3%) thereby humanizing HIV and stigmatized populations and promoting community mobilization. Novel content such as the handwriting image-theme (3.8%) where posters shared their HIV test results appeared. We discuss how this visual content aligns with public health priorities to reduce HIV in the US and the novel, organic messages that public health could help amplify.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by funds from the California HIV/AIDS Research Program Office of the University of California (OS17-SD-001). Dr. Nobles is also supported by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (T32 DA023356). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the California HIV/AIDS Research Program Office or National Institute of Drug Abuse.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Center for Data Driven Health at Qualcomm Institute, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Alicia L. Nobles, Eric C. Leas & John W. Ayers

  2. Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Alicia L. Nobles, Steffanie A. Strathdee & John W. Ayers

  3. Division of Health Policy, Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Eric C. Leas

  4. Department of Health, Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Carl A. Latkin

  5. Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Mark Dredze

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  1. Alicia L. Nobles
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Correspondence to John W. Ayers.

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Nobles, A.L., Leas, E.C., Latkin, C.A. et al. #HIV: Alignment of HIV-Related Visual Content on Instagram with Public Health Priorities in the US. AIDS Behav 24, 2045–2053 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-019-02765-5

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