Transgender refers to people whose current gender is diferent than their gender assigned at birth, including non-binary trans people. We shorten transgender to "trans" for the remainder of this paper.
Research suggests that marginalized social media users face disproportionate content moderation and removal. However, when content is removed or accounts suspended, the processes governing content moderation are largely invisible, making assessing content moderation bias difficult. To study this bias, we conducted a digital ethnography of marginalized users on Reddit’s /r/FTM subreddit and Twitch’s “Just Chatting” and “Pools, Hot Tubs, and Beaches” categories, observing content moderation visibility in real time. We found that on Reddit, a text-based platform, platform tools make content moderation practices invisible to users, but moderators make their practices visible through communication with users. Yet on Twitch, a live chat and streaming platform, content moderation practices are visible in channel live chats, “unban appeal” streams, and “back from my ban” streams. Our ethnography shows how content moderation visibility differs in important ways between social media platforms, harming those who must see offensive content, and at other times, allowing for increased platform accountability.
Online resources are vital to the health information practices of LGBTQ+ youth, especially when finding information related to sex education topics. As LGBTQ+ youth use the internet, particularly Google Search, to meet their sex and sexual health information needs, it is important to understand both the information practices related to this unique search experience and how the affordances of this particular search engine impact the information seeking process. The goal of this project is to study the online information practices of LGBTQ+ youth when searching for sex education information, specifically perceptions of and interactions with search engines. Using semi‐structured interviews, we ask LGBTQ+ youth to discuss their information practices related to sex education information and use Google Search to answer sample questions related to sex and sexual health. In this work in progress poster, we discuss our theoretical framing, methods, and preliminary results.
Background
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) young people (aged 15 to 25 years) face unique health challenges and often lack resources to adequately address their health information needs related to gender and sexuality. Beyond information access issues, LGBTQ+ young people may need information resources to be designed and organized differently compared with their cisgender and heterosexual peers and, because of identity exploration, may have different information needs related to gender and sexuality than older people.
Objective
The objective of our study was to work with a community partner to develop an inclusive and comprehensive new website to address LGBTQ+ young people’s health information needs. To design this resource website using a community-engaged approach, our objective required working with and incorporating content and design recommendations from young LGBTQ+ participants.
Methods
We conducted interviews (n=17) and participatory design sessions (n=11; total individual participants: n=25) with LGBTQ+ young people to understand their health information needs and elicit design recommendations for the new website. We involved our community partner in all aspects of the research and design process.
Results
We present participants’ desired resources, health topics, and technical website features that can facilitate information seeking for LGBTQ+ young people exploring their sexuality and gender and looking for health resources. We describe how filters can allow people to find information related to intersecting marginalized identities and how dark mode can be a privacy measure to avoid unwanted identity disclosure. We reflect on our design process and situate the website development in previous critical reflections on participatory research with marginalized communities. We suggest recommendations for future LGBTQ+ health websites based on our research and design experiences and final website design, which can enable LGBTQ+ young people to access information, find the right information, and navigate identity disclosure concerns. These design recommendations include filters, a reduced number of links, conscientious choice of graphics, dark mode, and resources tailored to intersecting identities.
Conclusions
Meaningful collaboration with community partners throughout the design process is vital for developing technological resources that meet community needs. We argue for community partner leadership rather than just involvement in community-based research endeavors at the intersection of human-computer interaction and health.
Embodiment and affect are understudied in information science work to date. Literature that engages with embodied information interactions typically focuses on physical bodies, while work on affect largely centers people's emotional experiences in formal knowledge institutions like libraries. Room therefore exists to grow in our understanding of embodiment and affect, particularly in terms of theorizing how bodies and feelings factor into a wide range of information experiences from non-dominant standpoints. This panel centers queer experiences and queer theory in order to expand conceptions of and connections between embodied and affective dimensions of information interactions. Panelists will present a range of research that examines queer people's practices and experiences with information in historical, archival, creative, and health-related domains. Bodies and emotions are essential components of critical queer theoretical perspectives, meaning that scholarship which centers queerness and its intersections with constructs like race has great potential to expand many branches of information science further beyond their normative bents. In concert, topics discussed should spark conversation among attendees about the theoretical and practical benefits of deeply studying embodiment and affect and further utilizing critical theory in multiple domains within the information science discipline.
BACKGROUND
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and/or questioning (LGBTQ+) young people (ages 15 to 25) face unique health challenges and often lack resources to adequately address their health information needs related to gender and sexuality.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of our study was to work with a community partner to develop an inclusive and comprehensive new website to address LGBTQ+ young people's health information needs.
METHODS
We conducted interviews (n = 17) and design sessions (n = 11) (total individual participants n = 25) with LGBTQ+ young people to understand their health information needs and elicit design recommendations for the new website.
RESULTS
We present participants’ desired resources, health topics, and technical website features that can facilitate information seeking for LGBTQ+ young people exploring their sexuality and gender and looking for health resources. We describe how filters can allow people to find information related to intersecting marginalized identities, and how dark mode can be a privacy measure to avoid unwanted identity disclosure. We reflect on our design process and situate the website development in previous critical reflections on participatory research with marginalized communities.
CONCLUSIONS
Meaningful collaboration with community partners throughout the design process is vital for developing technological resources that meet community needs. We argue for community partner leadership, rather than just involvement, in community-based research endeavors at the intersection of human-computer interaction and health.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.