Queer Privacy Protection: Challenges and the Fight within Libraries

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced libraries to shift their service-delivery model online, infiltrating countless interactions-from storytime to reference questions to social groups-into digital mediation, typically by third-party platforms outside the library's control, generating mineable, persistent digital traces. One community particularly vulnerable to the impacts of surveillance is the queer community, where an outing, at least in the United States, imposes a potential loss of housing and employment and may subject the outed person to violence. Libraries-particularly public and school libraries-have once again become sites of conflict and resistance, with queer people and materials increasingly coming under attack both physically and legally. A primary shield by which libraries try to protect their patrons from such attacks is "privacy." Librarians, as professionals, proclaim a commitment to privacy embedded in such documents as the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institution's Statement on Privacy in the Library Environment. However, these ideals exist in broader systems-including legal and cultural structures-which constrain and complicate abstract commitments to privacy. This article examines the challenges of queer digital privacy within libraries in the United States, focusing on the polysemous, boundary-crossing nature of queerness, the digital and the material, privacy, and libraries (as both concepts and institutions). In particular, this article demonstrates how binary-bound, individual-rights-oriented legal approaches to privacy have arisen, and been mediated, by cis-heteronormative patriarchal values and how the sociotechnical materialities in which they occurred (such as paper-based recordkeeping) are fundamentally incompatible with queer privacy needs.

Co-creation of a training for community health workers to enhance skills in serving LGBTQIA+ communities

This paper describes creating and implementing a 30-h LGBTQIA+ specialty training for community health workers (CHWs). The training was co-developed by CHW training facilitators (themselves CHWs), researchers with expertise in LGBTQIA+ populations and health information, and a cohort of 11 LGBTQIA+ CHWs who theater tested and piloted the course. The research and training team collected cohort feedback through focus groups and an evaluative survey. Findings stress the importance of a curriculum designed to elicit lived experiences and informed by a pedagogical framework centered on achieving LGBTQIA+ visibilities. This training is a vital tool for CHWs to foster cultural humility for LGBTQIA+ populations and identify opportunities to support their health promotion, especially considering their limited and sometimes absent access to affirming and preventative healthcare. Future directions include revising the training content based on cohort feedback and adapting it to other contexts, such as cultural humility training for medical and nursing professionals and staff.

Beyond disclosure: the role of self-identity and context collapse in privacy management on identified social media for LGBTQ+ people

Purpose

While anonymous online interactions could be helpful and less risky, they are usually not enough for LGBTQ+ people to satisfy the need of expressing their marginalized identity to networks of known ties (i.e. on identified social media like Facebook, WeChat, and TikTok). However, identified social media bring LGBTQ+ people both sources and challenges like “context collapse” that flattens diverse networks or audiences that are originally separated. Previous studies focus on LGBTQ+ people's disclosure and responses to context collapse, few studies investigate how their perceptions of context collapse are shaped and their privacy management beyond regulating disclosure on social media. Drawing on identity theory and communication privacy management (CPM), this study aims to investigate how the need of LGBTQ+ people for self-identity affects their perceived context collapse and results in privacy management on identified social media.

Design/methodology/approach

Given the target population is LGBTQ+ people, The authors recruited participants through active LGBTQ+ online communities, influential LGBTQ+ activists, and the snowballing sampling. The authors empirically examined the proposed model using the PLS-SEM technique with a valid sample of 232 respondents concerning their identity practices and privacy management on WeChat, a typical and popular identified social media in China.

Findings

The results suggested that the need for expressing the self and the need for maintaining continuity of self-identity have significant influences on perceived context collapse, but vary in directions. The perceived context collapse will motivate LGBTQ+ individuals to engage in privacy management to readjust rules on ownership, access, and extension. However, only ownership management helps them regain the perceived privacy control on social media.

Originality/value

This study incorporated and highlighted the influence of LGBTQ+ identity in shaping context collapse and online privacy management. This study contributes to the literature on privacy and information communication and yields practical implications, especially on improving privacy-related interactive design for identified social media services.