New media has been used to promote HIV/AIDS awareness in recent years. Mobile phones have become an easy and accessible way to reach out to vulnerale populations on such health matters. Rachel Jones, an educator at Rutgers University’s College of Nursing, developed a campaign with actors and scripts to demonstrate safer sex and condom use through a series of soap opera segments that can be viewed on mobile phones.
According to a recent interview, Jones said that mobile phones allow women to have privacy when viewing the episodes and enables them to watch them multiple times. She believes that “knowledge alone is not effective at changing behaviors” but that women in the targeted communities might change their behaviors if they identify with characters in the videos. According to Jones, many women experience pressure from their partners to have unprotected sex, and “[t]hese relationship concerns can feel much more important in the moment for some women than reducing HIV/AIDS, which can feel more distant.” Jones added that the videos aim to “normalize condom use.”
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