Breaking Stigma and Dispelling Invisibility: Animated Languages for Communicating HIV Disease

Numerous chronic diseases do not involve particular aesthetic indications and, for this reason, are considered "invisible". These diseases represent a large percentage of current ailments and people affected by them tend not to reveal their pathology, because it is stigmatizing. In recent years there has been a significant increase in social campaigns that have made great use of audio-visual artefacts, produced with the aim of educating, informing, raising awareness and giving to patients the possibility of emerging from invisibility. The article aims to focus on communication strategies using animated artefacts to dispel the invisibility of HIV, a virus considered deadly until the early 90s and which still today causes stigma, shame and desire for invisibility for those affected. Non-profit organizations and independent directors have worked on animation projects aimed at conducting information and awareness-raising actions, at suggesting avoiding risky behaviours, and at helping those affected escape from social isolation in which stigma and prejudice have confined them. These projects will be, therefore, selected, sorted and analysed according to the adopted different graphic languages and narrative approaches. The analysis considers the eight categories of communication styles formulated in 2008 by Roberto Bernocchi in the study of the communication artefacts produced as a tool for social awareness, and seeks to identify the linguistic and stylistic most adopted approaches in animated products that deal with the stigma of HIV and AIDS.