Large-scale online platforms powered by user-generated content are extensively researched as venues of learning and knowledge production. In this ethnographically oriented study, we examine knowledge practices on a community question answering platform for computer programmers in relation to the platform mechanics of voting. Grounded in the practice theoretical perspective and drawing on the analysis of online discussion threads and platform-related online materials, our study unpacks the dominant practice of crowd-based curation, the complementing practice of distributed moderation, and the more marginal practice of providing feedback to content producers. The practices co-exist in tension and consonance, which are embedded in the materiality of the platform and are continuously enacted through user discursive boundary work, sustaining the mentioned practices as intelligible for other users, and outlining what counts as legitimately participation on the platform. The study contributes to existing research on the roles voting plays on online platforms, as well as offers implications for research on social and material organization of users' online practices. The study also discusses that it is the ambiguity around the mechanics of voting that allows practices to co-exist. While this ambiguity is often discussed by users as problematic, we suggest as potential implication of our study that it may be productive to design platforms for workable forms of ambiguity allowing knowledge practices to co-exist in tension and to provide space for user negotiations of these practices.

In this paper, we examine posting behavior on a large-scale online knowledge sharing platform, Stack Overflow, and investigate how that behavior changes as users gain experience and status. We use a trace ethnographic approach, analyzing both the sayings and doings of users and the numerical and categorical trace data produced by their activities on the platform. Through analysis of this data, as well as interviews with users at different levels of experience, we identify a pattern of behavior where users shift their focus over time from directly answering questions themselves to supporting others and maintaining the quality of knowledge on the platform thus playing a particular role as the knowledge community scales

This exploratory paper examines a tension between interacting and documenting as knowledge sharing tasks on Stack Overflow, a platform that supports informal learning at scale in the domain of programming. The study works with platform data in the form of the text of posts and accompanying metadata along with 16 interviews with users. Drawing on trace ethnography as an approach to maintaining an interpretive stance while combining several types of data, this preliminary analysis discusses two interrelated particularities of the tension. The discussion of these particularities, platform mechanics and competing temporalities, helps to unpack a tension that is both a phenomenon of analytic interest and a member's concern for users of the platform.

The purpose of this study is to examine if, and to what extent, online Community Question Answering platforms expand the opportunities for professional development in programming. Longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of Stack Overflow Developer Surveys were used to examine users’ geographical distribution, gender, experience, professional status, platform usage and education. In order to study differences between the countries with the largest number of respondents, the developer survey data was combined with indicators of human development, gender equality and educational attainment. The results show that the Stack Overflow community has expanded to some extent, both in terms of wider geographical distribution and the programming expertise of users. However, the community reflects and fails to mitigate the apparent gender disparity in the field of programming. Furthermore, participation seems to be conditioned by formal education, especially in developing countries. In general, participation patterns in Stack Overflow seem to be heavily influenced by local conditions in different countries.

In this paper we draw upon a number of explorations of social media activities, trying to capture and understand them as located, situated practices. This methodological endeavor spans over analyzing patterns in big data feeds (here Instagram) as well as small-scale video-based ethnographic studies of user activities. A situated social media perspective involves examining how social media production and consumption are intertwined. Drawing upon our studies of social media use in cultural institutions we show how visitors orient to their social media presence while attending to physical space during a visit, and how editing and sharing processes are formed by the trajectory through a space. We discuss the application and relevance of this approach for understanding social media and social photography in situ.

The everyday use of smartphones with high quality built-in cameras has lead to an increase in museum visitors' use of these devices to document and share their museum experiences. In this paper, we investigate how one particular photo sharing application, Instagram, is used to communicate visitors' experiences while visiting a museum of natural history. Based on an analysis of 222 instagrams created in the museum, as well as 14 interviews with the visitors who created them, we unpack the compositional resources and concerns contributing to the creation of instagrams in this particular context. By re-categorizing and re-configuring the museum environment, instagrammers work to construct their own narratives from their visits. These findings are then used to discuss what emerging multimedia practices imply for the visitors' engagement with and documentation of museum exhibits. Drawing upon these practices, we discuss the connection between online social media dialogue and the museum site.