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Indonesia Council Open Conference 2025
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Negotiating Visibility: How Indonesian Queer Users Navigate Online Healthcare Services to Avoid Discrimination

Individual Paper

Individual Paper

11:00 am

10 July 2025

Room 119 (Sidney Myer Asia Centre)

Session 7: Online Spaces, Offline Realities: Gender, Religion and Healthcare in Digital Contexts

One Conference streams

Indonesia online

Submission Description

Digital platforms have emerged as an alternative method for Indonesians to access medical care. However, much less is known about the experiences of the Indonesian queer community when accessing online healthcare services. Drawing on data from the media go-along method (Jorgensen, 2016) with 21 participants who identified as queer in three cities in Indonesia, this project examines what strategies Indonesian LGBTQ+ users adopt to navigate and cope with stigma and discrimination when contacting healthcare services through health apps. The findings show that to avoid stigma and discrimination, participants negotiate their visibility by using many technological features on the health app, such as metric popularity and geolocation features. Participants also implement various practices, including maintaining their profile basic, filtering information through image sharing and chat features, and measuring practitioners' acceptance of LGBTQ+ issues through the platform's network recommendations.

Presenters

Presenters

Individual Paper Presenters

Ferry Hermawan - Monash University