Gender expression in a small world: Social tagging of transgender-themed books

Social tagging is evaluated as an information behavior in a small world, using Chatman, Burnett, and Besant's Theory of Normative Behavior. A survey was distributed to people who assign tags to transgender-themed books in LibraryThing, an social network site that allows members to catalog and tag their personal book collections. This study first establishes that there is an identifiable community of interest and then lays the groundwork for understanding the function of tagging in sharing information among a marginalized community for whom vocabulary and taxonomies are vital.

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