Navigating ‘danger zones’: social geographies of risk and safety in teens and tweens of color information seeking

ABSTRACT

Marginalized people often incur risk when interacting with information providers and institutions; they must weigh the risk of those interactions against the possible benefits of the knowledge or services gained. In this study, we analyze Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) teens and tweens’ articulation of their information practices and their risk management through information seeking. Using data from group interviews with 58 Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian American youth ages 12–18 in North Carolina we describe a model of socially co-constructed information geography focused around identifying, avoiding, and managing risks, costs, and benefits in information-related ‘danger zones.’ Participants described and demonstrated an ongoing conflict between the desire to seek and share information and the desire to avoid social, economic, political, and personal costs of information seeking. When participants observed a possible danger zone, they frequently engaged in a process of cost–benefit analysis that ultimately resulted in a series of defensive information behaviors, including avoidance, confrontation and open resistance, feigned compliance and subversion, and progressive disclosure.

KEYWORDS:

• Teens of color
• trust
• information seeking
• disclosure
• risk assessment
• power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Gibson and Kaplan (2017) for a discussion of space and place in information science.

2 For a definition of surfbort see: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/news/a19401/beyonce-drunk-in-love-surfboard/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by internal grants from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Junior Faculty Development award and Eleanor M. and Frederick G. Kilgour Research Grant Award) and a 2017 Examining Youths of Color’s Perceptions of Library Inclusiveness. Navigating ‘Danger Zones’: Social Geographies of Risk and Safety in Teens and Tweens of Color Information Seeking.

Notes on contributors

Amelia N. Gibson

Amelia N. Gibson is an Associate Professor at the School of Information & Library Science and director of the Community Equity, Data and Information Lab. She studies information marginalization, trust, and safety in health and learning institutions (libraries and education) and online, with a special focus on maternal health equity and disability justice. Her current work focuses on connections between personal assessments of danger or risk and marginalized people's use of defensive information behaviors to protect self, family, and community from institutional harm.

Sandra Hughes-Hassell

Sandra Hughes-Hassell is a Professor at the School of Information & Library Science and coordinator of the school library program. Her research and teaching focus on equity and inclusion in youth services librarianship. She is co-creator of Project Ready, a series of free, online professional development modules for school and public youth services librarians interested in improving their knowledge about race and racism, racial equity, and culturally sustaining pedagogy (https://ready.web.unc.edu/). Her most recent book is Collection Management for Youth: Equity, Inclusion & Learning (ALA, 2020).

Kristen Bowen

Kristen Bowen is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information & Library Science at UNC Chapel Hill. Her primary research interests are the ways that social media and technology support or act as barriers to marginalized populations' health and well-being. She employs an interdisciplinary approach to exploring how individuals search for, process, and use information (particularly in connection to socially stigmatized topics or invisible disabilities) in online spaces.