How community matters for how people interact with information: Mixed methods study of young men who have sex with other men

Background: we lack a systematic portrait of the relationship between community involvement and how people interact with information. young men who have sex with men (ymsm) are a population for which these relationships are especially salient: their gay community involvement varies and their information technology use is high. ymsm under age 24 are also one of the us populations with the highest risk of hiv/aids. objective: to develop,test,and refine a model of gay community involvement (gci) factors in human-information interaction (hii) as applied to hiv/aids information among ymsm,specifically examining the role of internet use in gci and hii. methods: mixed methods included: 1) online questionnaire with 194 ymsm; and 2) qualitative interviews with 19 ymsm with high gci levels. recruitment utilized social media,dating websites,health clinics,bars/clubs,and public postings. the survey included questions regarding hiv/aids-related information acquisition and use patterns,gay community involvement,risk behaviors,and technology use. for survey data,we tested multiple linear regression models using a series of communityand information-related variables as dependent variables. independent variables included community- and information-related variables and demographic covariates. we then conducted a recursive path analysis in order to estimate a final model,which we refined through a grounded theory analysis of qualitative interview data. results: four community-related variables significantly predicted how people interact with information (hii variables): 1) gay community involvement (gci),2) social costs of information seeking,3) network expertise accessibility,and 4) community relevance. gci was associated with significantly lower perceived social costs of hiv/aids information seeking (r2=0.07). gci and social costs significantly predicted network expertise accessibility (r2=0.14). gci predicted 14% of the variance in community relevance and 9% of the variance in information seeking frequency. incidental hiv/aids information acquisition (iia) was also significantly predicted by gci (r2=0.16). 28% of the variance in hiv/aids information use was explained by community relevance,network expertise access,and both iia and information seeking. the final path model showed good fit: the rsmea was 0.054 (90% ci: .000-.101); the chi-square was non-significant (?2(11)=17.105; p=.105); and the cfi was 0.967. qualitative findings suggest that the model may be enhanced by including information sharing: organizing events,disseminating messages,encouraging safety,and referring and recommending. information sharing emerged under conditions of pro-social community value enactment and may have consequences for further hii. ymsm with greater gci generally used the internet more,although they chatted online less. conclusions: hiv/aids-related hii and associated technology uses are community-embedded processes. the model provides theoretical mediators that may serve as a focus for intervention: 1) valuing hiv/aids information,through believing it is relevant to one's group,and 2) supportive and knowledgeable network members with whom to talk about hiv/aids. pro-social community value endorsement and information sharing may also be important theoretical mediators. our model could open possibilities for considering how informatics interventions can also be designed as community-level interventions and vice versa.