Impacts Of Media Dependency And Social Identity On Safe Sex Attitude In Shanghai's Gay Community

Gay community has become a minority and important group in China's society.Nevertherless,it is now still been denied by the mainstream heterosexual culture and value.Also,the mainstream media tends to present a negative profile of gay community through issues like “crime”and “AIDS spread”.Compared to lesbians,gays confront more direct social pressures,and serious health problems.Based on the development of Gay media whose audiences are mainly gay community,this study aims at examine the interrelationship between media practice and gay community identification or group norms to promote safe sex attitudes.Thus we introduce communication theory-media dependency and sociological theory-social identity to analyze how the two theories communicate with each other in China's gay community to help build or enhance safe sex attitudes.This may not only deepen the understanding of media effects,but also have implications for HIV prevention among gay community.A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods will be applied in this research.Deep interviews was done among 15 young gay men(age of 18~35)in Shanghai from different walks of life.The population was gained via snowballing technology,from personal contacts and school campus groups.Reuslts showed that 1.interviewees generally identified a high education level and social status,ordinary level of social identity and media dependency,but presents a strong sex norms and strongly positive safe sex attitude.2.Higher gay media dependency reports more positive safe sex attitude,which was mediated by media use genre but not media use frequency.3.Safe sex norms in gay community will influence individuals' attitude toward sex,while this effect was not found mediated by social identity.4.Media dependency could help enhance safe sex attitude.Gay media made people believe the important relation between gay media content and individual interest through exposing safe sex information and the negative outcome brought by disobeying safe sex norms.Thereby,people relied more on gay media and simultaneously learned and followed safe sex norms.They finally present safe sex attitudes and acts which was a positive media effect,where the function of social indentity is not significant.