Fear-based appeals in HIV prevention

You could argue that HIV prevention education in this country exists in the long shadow cast by the ‘Grim Reaper’, which appeared as part of a general HIV awareness campaign for less than three weeks in 1987. Focus groups conducted to explore fear appeals in the context of the current epidemic, consisting (in part) of young gay men who were in their infancy when the Grim Reaper appeared on television screens and in newspapers, referred to it as the last campaign that they remember and certainly the last campaign that they believe had any significant effect in terms of HIV prevention. Yet, duplicating the widespread cultural impact of the Grim Reaper ‘campaign’ has not been possible, since AIDS no longer occupies the particular cultural space it did in the mid-1980s.