Constructing HIV/AIDS in Chinese media (2010–2024): A mixed-methods study

In China, where HIV/AIDS remains one of the leading causes of infectious disease-related mortality, traditional media significantly shape public perceptions amid persistent prevention challenges. This study examines a large-scale corpus of news articles published between 2010 and 2024 to understand the evolving media discourse surrounding HIV/AIDS. Employing Analysis of Topic Model Networks (ANTMN) and collocation analysis, we extract the thematic networks, terminology for people living with HIV (PLHIV), and HIV/AIDS metaphors. Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and network backbone method were complementarily employed to examine the interrelationships among discursive strategies and their connections with thematic contexts. Our analysis identifies five major thematic communities: “Prevention and control”, “Publicity”, “Society”, “Medicine”, and “PLHIV”, encompassing 48 distinct topics. These findings reveal a clear discursive shift towards political and macro-level narratives, moving away from individual and social perspectives. Collocation analysis reveals 19 categories of PLHIV terminology and 12 categories of HIV/AIDS metaphors. Although de-identified terminology has become mainstream in discussions about PLHIV, stigmatizing terminology persists with typological diversity. War, journey, and entity metaphors form the core conceptual framework. The associations among PLHIV terminology, metaphors, and thematic contexts reflect the strategic adaptations of media institutions within a state-dominated system, while simultaneously manifesting the entrenched inertia of stigmatization. This study updates the empirical landscape of HIV/AIDS discourse within China’s media context, offering new insights into how the media shape social cognition of HIV/AIDS.