Googling Girls Kissing

This study examines the information practices of three Queer people born in the mid-1990s and currently living in Toronto via semi-structured interviews. Participants went through adolescence in an information poverty landscape, made as such by a heteronormative insider world. This study seeks to understand how they came to identify as they do now, how they discovered language to articulate their identity, and the trends in their information-seeking behaviour. In addition to interviews, participants created Information Horizon Interview (IHI) maps. The data depicts trends and patterns consistent with Elfreda A. Chapman’s information poverty concepts: secrecy, deception, and risk-taking. Applying this theory to information-seeking and -encountering patterns of my participants reveals both negative and positive information regarding Queerness on the internet and in media. The implication of my findings is that a continued need for the education of youth on gender and sexual identity is needed to ensure positive and accurate knowledge is learned.