Writing for digital news about HIV criminalization in canada

Abstract

For years, HIV activists in Canada have expressed serious concerns about the stigmatizing and sensational way that HIV criminalization is portrayed in the mainstream press. Discourse analyses of the content of news stories about HIV criminalization confirm that news reports of HIV criminal cases rely on sensational language and reproduce negative stereotypes of people living with HIV. This paper contributes to social justice scholarship in the area by building upon studies of news content to uncover how news reports of HIV criminalization are produced in the first place. Through institutional ethnographic interviews with journalists who produce news stories about HIV criminalization, this study brings into view that conditions of convergence journalism make it exceedingly difficult for reporters to disrupt the genre of crime stories about HIV criminalization in which stigmatizing discourses proliferate.

Prosecuting and Propagating Emotional Harm: The Criminalisation of HIV Nondisclosure in Canada

“…This kind of emotional harm and the feelings attached to it "reflect the victim's recognition of the harm that he has suffered [and] if he did not realize that he had [not] been [disclosed to], this would not mean that he did not suffer a harm of this distinctive kind; it would mean that he did not realize that he had been thus harmed." This raises the question "of whether one who does not care […] about the wrong done has still been harmed by it" (Duff 2001, 23) and could explain why it is that heterosexual women are the predominant group that reports instances of HIV nondisclosure to police (Hastings et al 2022). Weait (2007, 112) acknowledges that "incorporeal feelings-of time stolen, of a future damaged, of intimacy soured-which may more adequately reflect the harm experienced, are irrelevant in establishing whether an offence has been committed under the law as it stands."…”

“…In Canada, people living with HIV (PLWH) may be criminally charged for failing to disclose their HIV status prior to sex regardless of whether the virus was transmitted (Grant 2008). While some countries, including the United Kingdom and certain Australian territories, limit criminalization to cases involving transmission, 36% of Canadian HIV nondisclosure cases involve transmission while 64% involve exposure alone (Hastings et al 2022), evincing a national trend toward an overly broad use of criminalization and HIV exceptionalism in law. Canada does not have a specific law that criminalizes nondisclosure, meaning Crown prosecutors use general provisions in the Criminal Code (commonly aggravated sexual assault) to hold PLWH criminally responsible for failing to disclose their HIVpositive serostatus prior to sex (HIV/AIDS Legal Network 2019).…”

Trampling on Indigenous and Treaty Rights afterR v. Stanley: “That's What You Get for Trespassing”

“…The win SARM declared was earned in advocacy work that successfully recontextualized concerns about trespassing and rural crime from the courtroom in which R v. Stanley was heard to SARM's convention floor. In making this claim, I follow Colin Hastings (2020), an institutional ethnographer who has taken up the notion of recontextualization in his research. Recontextualization involves “the extrication of some part or aspect from a text or discourse, or from a genre of texts or discourses, and the fitting of this part or aspect into another context” (Linnel, 1998: 145).…”

“…On November 27, 2018, the minister of justice introduced the Trespass to Property Amendment Act, 2019 into Saskatchewan's Legislature. A news release disseminated the same day facilitated the coordination of that part of the Government of Saskatchewan's work that involves informing reporters about its lawmaking activities with reporters’ newswork or “the diverse everyday activities that reporters do to produce news content” (Hastings, 2020: 35).…”

Remembering Dorothy E. Smith

“…Influenced by Smith's writings and by George Smith's formulation of institutional ethnography as political activist ethnography (Smith, G. 1990), this body of research preserves the embodied local sites of experience of actual subjects, in this case people living with HIV, as the starting point for inquiry. While there are more contributions to this scholarship than I can name, some key examples include work on HIV criminalization (Mykhalovskiy 2011, Hastings, 2022, McClelland 2019, Sanders 2015 prevention (Namaste 2012, Gaspar 2019, immigration (Bisaillon 2022), and clinical care (McCoy 2005, Mykhalovskiy 2008 Odihambo 2022, Ion 2022).…”