Queer information literacies: social and technological circulation in the rural Midwestern United States

Abstract

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people living in rural communities have unique needs related to cultural and information access about their identities. A growing body of literature is concerned with the experiences of rural LGBTQ people’s experiences and their use of information and communication technologies for supporting identity and community. However, there is opportunity to better understand relationships between various information sources and how information access itself lends to the creation of queer communities. Seeing the need for a more holistic understanding of the LGBTQ information landscape, this study builds on existing work with rural LGBTQ people, and asks how do rural LGBTQ people get access to information about sexual and gender identity and how is that information embedded through the practice of circulation? Drawing from ethnographic research in a rural region of the Midwestern United States, this study proposes the concept of queer information literacy: a process through which LGBTQ people find, recognize, share, and create information related to their sexual and gender identities. Using queer information literacy as a framework, the paper shows how disparate information access results in the formation of different, and often conflicting, LGBTQ experiences.