“You're this person who's providing light”: Embodied responses to information loss and transition within LGBTQIA+ communities

This paper reports on findings from 15 semi-structured interviews with LGBTQIA+ individuals within the United States who have experienced the loss of one or more LGBTQIA+ information spaces. The paper specifically focuses on how such losses occurred and the information transitions experienced by the participants in response to this loss. Findings from the paper show that affective and embodied elements both individually and communally inform how information loss informs one's desire to transition to new information spaces. The findings also reveal new one's sociocultural contexts inform how information loss and transition occurs, while also highlighting information creation as a common transitional response to information loss. The paper's findings contribute to information science research by contextualizing queer information spaces as a critical component that shapes how people engage with and make sense of information by exploring this phenomenon within an understudied population and new contexts of loss and transition. Additionally, the paper offers new examples of information creation and invites future directions focusing on this practice within LGBTQIA+ communities. Further, the paper contributes theoretical insights for framing informational transitions in response to loss and absence as a phenomenological experience.