Queer communities experience challenges when accessing accurate and comprehensive health information. These challenges span across media and information environments and threaten queer health promotion. This paper explored how 11 queer community health workers (chw s) in a Southeastern US state respond to, subvert, and resist these challenges when creating digital health information resources for their queer communities. This longitudinal action research occurred over two years and included multiple qualitative data types. We analyzed these data using qualitative coding, following deductive and inductive strategies. Findings demonstrate how queer chw s: 1) identified risks and barriers to health promotion their communities experienced; 2) created health information resources that proactively guarded against risks and reactively resisted barriers; 3) borrowed content, format, and logic from other digital media sources, remixing and repurposing them in ways relevant to their communities. Findings denote implications for decentering deficit-based approaches to framing the health and media literacies of queer populations.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Bauer, Greta R., Hammond, Rebecca, Travers, Robb, Kaay, Matthias, Hohenadel, Karin M., & Boyce, Michelle (2009). ‘I don’t think this is theoretical; this is our lives’: How erasure impacts health care for transgender people. Journal of the Association of Nurses in aids Care, 20(5): 348–361. doi: 10.1016/j.jana.2009.07.004.
Braquet, Donna, & Mehra, Bharat (2006). Contextualizing internet use practices of the cyber-queer: Empowering information realities in everyday life. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 43(1): 1–10. doi: 10.1002/meet.14504301282.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice (Trans. Richard Nice). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1972).
The Community Health Worker Core Consensus (C3) Project (2018). Together leaning toward the sky. https://www.c3project.org/_files/ugd/7ec423_2b0893bcc93a422396c744be8c1d54d1.pdf.
Charmaz, Kathy (2014). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: sage Publications.
Chatman, Elfreda A. (1996). The impoverished life-world of outsiders. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47(3): 193–206. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1097–4571(199603)47:3<193::AID-ASI3>3.0.CO;2-T.
Cheney-Lippold, John (2011). A new algorithmic identity: Soft biopolitics and the modulation of control. Theory, culture & society, 28(6): 164–181. doi: 10.1177/0263276411424420.
Eknes-Tucker v. Governor of the State of Alabama, 876 F.3d 571 (11th Cir. 2017). https://texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/executive-management/11th%20Cir%20Brief%20-%20Filemarked.pdf.
Espinoza Vasquez, Fatima, & Oltmann, Shannon M. (2023). Information precarity and the agentic practices of marginalized communities: Puerto Rican activists addressing the crisis before, during, and after Hurricane Maria. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 1–14. doi: 10.1002/asi.24742.
Evans, Jabari (2020). Connecting Black youth to critical media literacy through hip hop making in the music classroom. Journal of Popular Music Education, 4(3): 277–293. doi: 10.1386/jpme_00020_1.
Gibson, Amelia N., & Martin III, John D. (2019). Re-situating information poverty: Information marginalization and parents of individuals with disabilities. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 70(5): 476–487. doi: 10.1002/asi.24128.
Greyson, Devon, O’Brien, Heather, & Shoveller, Jean (2017). Information world mapping: A participatory arts-based elicitation method for information behavior interviews. Library & Information Science Research, 39(2): 149–157. doi: 10.1016/j.lisr.2017.03.003.
Higgins, Joan Wharf, & Begoray, Deborah (2012). Exploring the borderlands between media and health: Conceptualizing ‘critical media health literacy.’ Journal of Media Literacy Education, 4(2): 136–148. doi: 10.23860/jmle-4-2-4.
Ignatow, Gabe, & Robinson, Laura (2017). Pierre Bourdieu: theorizing the digital. Information, Communication & Society, 20(7): 950–966. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1301519.
Jaeger, Paul T., & Burnett, Gary (2010). Information worlds: Behavior, technology, and social context in the age of the Internet. New York: Routledge.
Kcomt, Luisa (2019). Profound health-care discrimination experienced by transgender people: Rapid systematic review. Social Work in Health Care, 58(2): 201–219. doi: 10.1080/00981389.2018.1532941.
Kitzie, Vanessa L., Wagner, Travis L., & Vera, Alexander N. (2020). ‘In the beginning, it was little whispers… now, we’re almost a roar’: Conceptualizing a model for community and self in lgbtq+ health information practices. In Sustainable Digital Communities: 15th International Conference, iConference 2020, Boras, Sweden, March 23–26, 2020, Proceedings 15, pp. 15–31. Springer International Publishing.
Kitzie, Vanessa L., Vera, Alexander N., & Wagner, Travis L. (2022). Understanding the Information Creation Practices of lgbtqia+ Community Health Workers. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 59(1): 145–156. doi: 10.1002/pra2.612.
Kuypers, Jim A. (2010). Framing analysis from a rhetorical perspective. In D’Angelo, Paul, & Kuypers, Jim A. (Eds.), Doing news framing analysis: Empirical and theoretical perspectives, pp. 302–327. New York: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780203864463.
Lockmiller, Mary Catherine (2019, September 4). Against medicine: Constructing a queer-feminist community health informatics and librarianship. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2019/against-medicine/.
Lookingbill, Valerie, Vera, A. Nick, Wagner, Travis L., & Kitzie, Vanessa L. (2021). ‘We Can Be Our Best Alliance’: Resilient Health Information Practices of lgbtqia+ Individuals as a Buffering Response to Minority Stress. In Diversity, Divergence, Dialogue: 16th International Conference, iConference 2021, Beijing, China, March 17–31, 2021, Proceedings, Part II 16, pp. 3–17. Springer International Publishing.
McIntyre, Alice (2007). Participatory action research. Thousand Oaks, CA: sage Publications.
McKinney, Cait (2020). Information activism: A queer history of lesbian media technologies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Morris, Martin, & Blake, Wesley Hawkins (2016). Towards a new specialization in health librarianship: lgbtq health. Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association, 37(1): 20–23. doi: 10.5596/c16-007.
Noble, Safiya Umoja (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. New York, NY: New York University Press. doi: 10.2307/j.ctt1pwt9w5.
Romanelli, Meghan, & Hudson, Kimberly D. (2017). Individual and systemic barriers to health care: Perspectives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 87(6): 714–728. doi: 10.1037/ort0000306.
Saldaña, Johnny (2012). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (2nd ed). Great Britain: sage Publications.
Savolainen, Reijo (1995). Everyday life information seeking: Approaching information seeking in the context of ‘way of life.’ Library & Information Science Research, 17(3): 259–294. doi: 10.1016/0740-8188(95)90048–9.
Savolainen, Reijo (2007). Information behavior and information practice: Reviewing the ‘umbrella concepts’ of information-seeking studies. The library quarterly, 77(2): 109–132. doi: 10.1086/517840.
Surette, Ray (2007). Media, crime and criminal justice: Images, realities and policies. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth Publishing.
Sykes, Susie, Wills, Jane, Rowlands, Gillian, & Popple, Keith (2013). Understanding critical health literacy: A concept analysis. bmc Public Health, 13(1): 1–10. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-13-150.
Villanueva-Mansilla, Eduardo, Nakano, Teresa, & Evaristo, Inés. (2015). From divides to capitals: An exploration of digital divides as expressions of social and cultural capital. In Communication and information technologies annual. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. doi: 10.1108/S2050-2060201510.
Wagner, Travis. L., Kitzie, Vanessa. L., & Lookingbill, Valerie. (2022). Transgender and nonbinary individuals and ict-driven information practices in response to transexclusionary healthcare systems: a qualitative study. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 29(2), 239–248.
Wilson, Thomas D. (2000). Human information behaviour. Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 3(2): 49–55. doi: 10.28945/576.
Yang, Mary. (2023, February 15). ‘New York Times’ stories on trans youth slammed by writers – including some of its own. National Public Radio. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2023/02/15/1157181127/nyt-letter-trans.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 549 | 399 | 94 |
Full Text Views | 119 | 27 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 90 | 36 | 2 |
Queer communities experience challenges when accessing accurate and comprehensive health information. These challenges span across media and information environments and threaten queer health promotion. This paper explored how 11 queer community health workers (chw s) in a Southeastern US state respond to, subvert, and resist these challenges when creating digital health information resources for their queer communities. This longitudinal action research occurred over two years and included multiple qualitative data types. We analyzed these data using qualitative coding, following deductive and inductive strategies. Findings demonstrate how queer chw s: 1) identified risks and barriers to health promotion their communities experienced; 2) created health information resources that proactively guarded against risks and reactively resisted barriers; 3) borrowed content, format, and logic from other digital media sources, remixing and repurposing them in ways relevant to their communities. Findings denote implications for decentering deficit-based approaches to framing the health and media literacies of queer populations.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 549 | 399 | 94 |
Full Text Views | 119 | 27 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 90 | 36 | 2 |