Storm Warnings: Responding to Messages of Danger in Isan

To understand the influence of HIV/AIDS education campaigns we must consider cultural models that shape shared meaning and at the same time acknowledge that public warning messages are not uniformly internalised. Using data from Northeast Thailand I examine two key pulses from which meaning proliferates in village society, a sense of emotion and a sense of morality. I suggest that the affective and directive aspects of HIV/AIDS discourses shape the individual's internalisation of meaning, they exert the most motivational force and at the same time the most potential for variation in (mis)construed understandings.