“The visibily of homosexuality in public space as an issue of HIV/AIDS prevention”

Over the past decade, HIV/AIDS prevention has diversified with the discovery of new biomedical strategies, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which involves taking antiretroviral therapy by HIV-negative people. Legal since January 2016 in France, it is recommended for people at high risk of HIV infection, especially men who have sex with men (MSM). At the end of 2016, the diversification of prevention was for the first time the subject of the French state communication campaign targeting MSM in the public sphere and featuring male couples. This has been the subject of controversy, in the legacy of moral debates and homophobic rhetoric generated by the PACS and the so-called “Marriage for all” law. As public communication can be considered as a reservoir of meaning, the appropriation of prevention strategies seems complex in this context. Based on the analysis of the content of the four posters making up the 2016 campaign as well as nineteen general press articles, this communication proposes to examine the visibility of homosexuality in the public space as a prevention issue.