SEXUAL RISK IN THE CONTEXT OF SAME-SEX BEHAVIOR

Grant Title: HIV Prevention with Men who Use the Internet

Project Name: Frontiers in Prevention (FIP)
Funding Source and Project Period: NIMH R01; 2003 - 2006

Collaborating Institutions and Key Personnel:
HIV Center:
Principal Investigator: Alex Carballo-Diéguez, PhD.
Co-Investigators: Robert H. Remien, Ph.D.; Michele Shedlin, Ph.D.;
Ivan Balan, Ph.D.; Curtis Dolezal, Ph.D.;
Consultants: John L. Peterson, Ph.D.; Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow: Peter Lin, Ph.D.
Project Manager: Ana Ventuneac, M.A.
Research Assistant: Oswaldo Luciano, M.S.
Graduate Research Assistant: Hameed (Herukuti) Williams, M.Ed., M.A.

Project Overview: During the last decade, Internet use became increasingly popular, with technological advances making access to information easier and faster. Today, an average user not only can search the immense Web database for topics of interest but also can exchange images, video, text, and voice messages with other users anywhere in the world in real time ("chat"). Not surprisingly, many individuals have turned to the Internet to seek love, companionship, and sex. Men who have sex with men (MSM) are avid users of the Internet for dating and sexual purposes, as documented both by a number of recent studies and the increasing number of Internet services catering to MSM. Mainstream Internet providers feature user-created chat rooms where MSM can easily find each. Besides mainstream Internet portals, there are also gay-oriented web sites that provide a variety of services from personals to gay-oriented merchandising. There are also sex-specific sites that unabashedly cater to the sexual interests of their users. One of them states in its portal that 1,500,000 visitors cruise by it each month. This proliferation of Web sites for MSM and the efficiency with which they can be used appears to be having an impact on the sexual behavior of MSM.

The high prevalence and incidence of HIV among men who have sex with men in New York City requires further understanding of individual and contextual factors underlying unprotected sex, specifically among MSM of color and those in cultural niches that may favor risky sex. Our three-year exploratory study focuses on MSM who meet sexual partners through the Internet to intentionally engage in sexual behaviors in situations in which there is risk of HIV transmission. Maintaining respect for community norms and gay men's modus operandi as our prime focus, our study seeks to describe the milieu in which encounters that lead to sexual risky behavior take place and to assess the receptiveness of MSM Internet users to non-condom HIV-prevention innovations such as rectal microbicides or HIV vaccines. Other aims of the study include to describe risky sex as behavior and/or identity, its attributed meanings, and the psychological correlates (underlying motivations and emotions) that precede, are concurrent with, and follow it; and to contrast the above mentioned factors by ethnic group (African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and European American).

Publications and Presentation Abstracts:
"Barebacking" and the Internet: Ethnography of popular sites used by gay men to meet others for intentionally unprotected anal sex." Oral presentation at the XV International AIDS Conference, Bangkok, Thailand, July 11-16, 2004. Abstract # WeOrD1335.

"Ethnography of ‘Bareback' Internet Services." Oral presentation at the International Academy of Sex Research Annual Meeting, Helsinki, Finland, June 16-19, 2004.

"Bareback" o montando a pelo: La nueva frontera en la prevención del SIDA en HSH." Plenary presentation at the Seminario Internacional de Mejores Prácticas de Prevención de VIH/SIDA en HSH. Mexico, D.F., December 12-15, 2005.

Update: 6/21/05