LGBTQ+ individuals seeking information and support from online communities to navigate unpleasant emotions

As part of an ongoing project, this paper investigates the LGBTQ+ individual's emotions they expressed when seeking information and support in online communities by analyzing online user generated posts in LGBT Chats & Forums. Sixty‐one posts that contained emotional texts were coded using content analysis. Seven categories of emotions emerged from the analysis: fear, uncertainty, sadness, anger, shame, joy and others. The results show that emotions LGBTQ+ individuals expressed in their online requests are often unpleasant and evoked their needs of informational and emotional supports. The findings contribute to the existing knowledge of how LGBTQ+ individuals cope with unpleasant emotions and how online communities can better support sexual and gender minority people.