Information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to be widely regarded as tools which will shift economic prospects and invigorate rural society. In particular, ICTs such as social media and new forms of healthcare delivery are seen as opportunities to address issues of isolation, resource limitation, and cultural homogeneity in rural areas. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals are uniquely positioned to benefit from ICT use in rural areas. LGBTQ people are uniquely reliant on media and non-familial social relations to get access to conceptions of what it means to be an LGBTQ person. Physical community spaces for the sharing of identity practices, such as bars and community centers more common in urban areas, are not as compatible with limited population densities and political realities of rural areas. With this in mind, this paper asks: given the distributed nature of LGBTQ populations, where do rural LGBTQ people get access to information about identity? Further, what implications does this have for rural LGBTQ communities?
Drawing from three years of ethnographic research in a rural region of the Midwestern United States, I look at the community building practices of LGBTQ people in two rural towns and their surrounding areas. Through my engagement with interviews, archival work, and observations, I propose 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, I demonstrate how rural LGBTQ community members come to have different understandings of sexual and gender identity and how these differences shape what community is possible.
This study builds on prior work in rural queer studies, by scholars such as Mary Gray and John Howard, showing how rural LGBTQ people circulate through physical and digital spaces. Additionally, I build on work in rural studies and social computing that demonstrates the complexities of hope for ICTs and how they often do not deliver in the ways that they were intended to.
