Day 1, afternoon session #lilac25: The Role of Emotion in Access to Information on Reproductive Health, Illness, and Disability: Implications for Information Literacy Instruction

Natalia Kapacinskas and Veronica Aellano Douglas from the University of Houston Libraries presented their work to explore the intersections between emotions, information access and information literacy and how that relates to information seeking for reproductive health, blogs Pam McKinney from the LILAC conference. "Emotion" is a complicated concept, it is an affective phenomenon which is discrete which suggest the existence of 6 or more basic emotions (e.g. sadness, happiness, surprise) or continuous as in they exist on a spectrum. Appraisal theory has become used to try to explain emotions as a functional state that prompts behaviours. This is related to information behaviour in that how does emotion support or prompt an information search. They take a social-constructivist perspective in their work.

Both authors are interested in disability, illness and reproductive health and the emotions associated with them, which seem to be inconsistent with traditional views presented in academic sources. For example, there is a narrative that disabled people should be "inspirational" to others, and families should be "disappointed" by disability and illness in their children. There is a narrative around "persistence" and "control" in relation to chronic illness. Reproductive health is associated with "determination" and a happy ending when challenges are overcome: there is always "hope". These narratives don't always reflect the reality of the emotional experiences of the people who have chronic illness, disability or reproductive health problems. There are "unacceptable" emotions such as frustration, violence, confusion, fear, shame anger and guilt. The prevailing narratives affect the information that is published, and therefore what information is available to be found.

Information marginalisation is the systemic process that pushes people to the margins of society, where their needs are overlooked. The presenters propose that social expectations of emotion exemplify information marginalisation, and this affects how people search for information. Information behaviour models do encompass aspects of emotion, but they don't consider the emotions of the researcher towards the topic, only the information search process itself, and this contributes to information marginalisation. The literature on health information seeking is a little more connected to emotions, however, information literacy models are not based on this literature and tend to assume that successful research requires controlled emotions. Holocaust librarianship, Indigenous information literacy and emotionally engaged research are more aligned with looking at the whole person and acknowledging these unpleasant emotions that might be rooted in a person's history or cultural situation. We need to take emotions, and their social and cultural context into account when designing information literacy teaching. For example, librarians need to recognise that the way information is sought might be influenced by defensive behaviours e.g. selected disclosure to protect a child from scrutiny. Online communities can provide a way to seek and share information from outside the traditional medical establishment. 

It is also important that librarians recognise their own emotional reaction to these health and illness-related topics and look inward to consider how best to support a researcher. This was a really thought-provoking presentation, which encouraged me to reflect on the relationship between emotion and information literacy.

Photo by Pam McKinney: Tree in bloom in Cardiff city centre