Introduction

Identity-based interventions continue to dominate social work's involvement with queer (male) publics. Ironically, queer publics are not readily contained in many dominant categories available to health research and clinical practice, as these publics are indefinite networks of variously identified and behaving men. Within a critical frame, queer publics – or ‘counterpublics’ – are not static; instead they are produced discursively. Counterpublics exist always in relation to dominant culture, and are evidenced through mediated communication. Accordingly, the objects of communication, rather than its privileged subjects, deserve increased attention in health promotion and -disparities research. This requires a transdisciplinary approach, one that can account for communicative practices while simultaneously making them accountable to the ideological work that they do in lived-and shared experiences. To that end, presented herein is a methodology animated by commitments to social justice and critical theory, and architected through two interrelated critical communication methodologies: critical discourse analysis and social semiotics. This transdisciplinary approach apprehends how micro processes normalise and produce meanings for macro social processes. One case study is provided as an example of this methodology deployed in the field of HIV prevention.

Theoretical framework for LGBT health and social care

Just as the transmission of HIV involves varying amounts of human agency, so do the processes of developing knowledge and distributing information about the pandemic from ‘us professionals’ to ‘those people out there’ in the social world. Health communication is predicated on production and promotion; the production relates to the how, the processes of making discourse, and the promotion is the what, or the discourse itself. In other words, the production and promotion of health (from incipient ideas through the evaluation of goods and services) involve authority, discriminating choices, access and, especially in the case of HIV/AIDS, outcomes related to the quality and sustainability of life proper. Simply, health promotion and production involve power – and, more critically, biopower or technologies through the human body – and have influence over ways of thinking, self-identification and ways of behaving in social and sexual contexts (Foucault, 1978, 1985, 1986). Gay men and men who have sex with men (MSM) continue to evince disproportionate rates of HIV infection across the world, and, therefore, receive targeted attention by health authorities.