A88. Shelley, G.,
Killworth, P., Bernard, H.R., McCarty, C., Johnsen, & Rice, R.E.
(2006). Who knows your HIV status II?: Information propagation
within
social networks of seropositive people. Human Organization, 65(4), 430-444.
We
seek to explain on what basis people choose to tell stigmatizing
information
about themselves to others. In particular, are there any rules
governing how
such decisions are made? We asked 70 HIV-positive individuals whether
they knew
various items of knowledge about their network members, and vice versa.
These
items range from things which might be known easily (e.g., marital
status),
things which are more difficult to know (e.g., blood type), to
potentially
stigmatizing information such as criminal record and HIV status. The
information that one person knows about another may predict whether the
latter’s HIV status is also known. We examine this question using a
combination
of ethnography and decision trees. Even an apparently simple decision –
whether
or not to tell someone that you are seropositive – turns out to be
complicated;
yet the complexity can be extracted from open-ended interviews.