Mitigating Epistemic Injustice: The Online Construction of a Bisexual Culture

Abstract

People participating in online groups often co-construct knowledge of what they believe and, sometimes, co-construct their understanding of who they are. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 13 members of the online forum r/bisexual on Reddit, we found participants collaboratively constructing an understanding of bisexuality. We found this knowledge-building fills an epistemic gap resulting from bisexuality often being poorly understood. When individuals do not possess knowledge key to understanding their own lives, this can be seen as hermeneutical injustice – a type of epistemic injustice. We use the lens of hermeneutical injustice to shed light on participants’ experiences on r/bisexual. Our work contributes to recent research on epistemic injustice in HCI by looking at how members of r/bisexual mitigate epistemic injustice by reclaiming residuality – the space outside the gay-straight binary. We also discuss considerations for hermeneutical injustice to inform the design of online communities and HCI research practice.