Representation, community and hidden signals : A study of queer womens' information practices on social media

Many studies centered around different societal groups’ information practices have been conducted over the years. LGBTQ+ people have been the subject of several of these studies, however queer women in specific have not been the main subject in many of them. This qualitative study is centered on queer women, and how they seek and share information related to their queer identity on social media. A central aspect of the study is privacy, and how the respondents manage the disclosure of their sexual orientation online. Although LGBTQ+ rights have increased greatly, research as recent as from 2022 has shown that LGBTQ+ individuals are more self aware concerning their private information than cisgender and heterosexual people, and limit themselves in sharing queer indications online. This study aims to answer how queer women use social media to attain information about queer topics, how they present themselves and their queer identity on different social platforms, and thirdly, how they manage privacy boundaries online. The study draws on seven semi-structured interviews with queer women. The theories used to analyze and interpret the results are everyday life information seeking (ELIS), self presentation, and communication privacy management (CPM). The primary concepts used were context collapse, imagined audiences, and privacy boundaries. The results showed that many used social media to find inspiration and explore their identity, some used it to connect with a queer community, and a few to express their own queerness. Audience separation, team collusion and searching for queer content were recurring practices, and there was generally high awareness of privacy boundaries, and algorithmic functions. We found that queer women use different strategies to manage the way they are perceived on social media, to protect the information they deem private, and to decide in their own time who knows about their sexual identity.