Wikipedia is no longer just another source of knowledge about the world. It is fast becoming a central source, used by other powerful knowledge brokers like Google and Bing to offer authoritative answers to search queries about people, places and things and as information infrastructure for a growing number of Web applications and services. Researchers have found that Wikipedia offers a skewed representation of the world that favours some groups at the expense of others so that representations on the platform have repercussions for the subjects of those representations beyond Wikipedia's domain. It becomes critical in this context to understand how exactly Wikipedia's representations come about, what practices give rise to them and what socio-technical arrangements lead to their expression. This ethnographic study of Wikipedia explores the values, principles and practices that guide what knowledge Wikipedia represents. It follows the foundational principles of Wikipedia in its identity both as an encyclopaedia and a product of the free and open source software and internet freedom rhetoric of the early 2000s. Two case studies are analysed against the backdrop of this ideology, illustrating how different sets of actors battle to extend or reject the boundaries of Wikipedia, and in doing so, affect who are defined as the experts, subjects and revolutionaries of the knowledge that is taken up. The findings of this thesis indicate that Wikipedia's process of decision-making is neither hierarchical nor is it egalitarian; rather, the power to represent on Wikipedia is rhizoid: it happens at the edges rather than in the centre of the network. Instead of everyone having the same power to represent their views on Wikipedia, those who understand how to perform and speak according to Wikipedia's complex technical, symbolic and policy vocabulary tend to prevail over those who possess disciplinary knowledge about the subject being represented. Wikipedians are no amateurs as many would have us believe; nor are they passive collectors of knowledge held in sources; Wikipedians are, instead, active co-creators of knowledge in the form of facts that they support using specially chosen sources. The authority of Wikipedia and Wikipedians is garnered through the performative acts of citation, through the ability of individual editors to construct the traces that represent citation, and through the stabilization and destabilization of facts according to the ideological viewpoints of its editors. In venerating and selecting certain sources among others, Wikipedians also serve to reaffirm traditional centres of authority, while at the same time amplifying new centres of knowledge and denying the authority of knowledge that is not codified in practice. As a result, Wikipedia is becoming the site of new centres of expertise and authoritative knowledge creation, and is signalling a move towards the professionalization of the expertise required to produce factual data in the context of digital networks.

Der Prozess der zunehmenden medialen Durchdringung unseres Alltags, der u.a. von Krotz (2007) als Mediatisierung beschrieben wird, betrifft alle gesellschaftlichen Bereiche und bleibt deshalb auch nicht folgenlos für Wissenschaft und Forschung. Insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Implementierung digitaler Medien und vor allem des Internet, ist ein Wandel des wissenschaftlichen Handlungsfelds hin zu einer E-Science bzw. „Cyberscience“ (Nentwich, 2003) zu beobachten. Davon sind jedoch nicht nur soziale und infrastrukturelle Aspekte von Wissenschaft betroffen (vgl. u.a. Berghaus, 2003; Donk, 2010). So stellt die Erweiterung kommunikativer Handlungspotenziale im Internet nicht nur „normale“ Nutzer, sondern auch Forscher vor neuartige Probleme (vgl. u.a. Beck 2010). Inwiefern sich dies auf das Handlungsfeld „Internetforschung“ auswirkt, ist Gegenstand der vorgestellten Studie, deren Kerninteresse die forschungsethischen Implikationen dieser Entwicklung sind: Welche forschungsethischen Probleme entstehen in der Alltagspraxis von Internetforschern? Braucht es neue ethische Richtlinien? Diese Fragen wurden im Zuge einer qualitativen Befragung von 17 deutschen Internetforschern aus dem Bereich Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaft eruiert.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis was to investigate how communities can be formed online. By applying Randall Collins theory of Interaction Ritual Chains to live chats in the Just Chatting and esport categories on Twitch.tv, we aimed to explore how communities on the website are established through interaction rituals. By identifying and mapping them we hoped to not only find differences between streams and their live chats, but also to find universal rituals that can be applied to chats across Twith.tv as a whole. As our method, we used a digital ethnographic approach, often referred to as netnography, where the data later was processed by using a qualitative data analysis. This study found several interaction rituals in live chats on Twitch.tv, where communities met with mutual focus. Channel specific emotes, jargons and internal references acted as barriers to entry as well as methods of confirming shared moods. The study also found that while esport streams were dominated by expressive rituals, Just-Chatting streams were defined by conversing rituals that invited users to two-way communication.

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<b>Introduction:</b> Health-related websites have developed to be much more than information sites: they are used to exchange experiences and find support as well as information and advice. It is important that health professionals and website developers understand how content may impact users. This thesis documents the development and application of a tool to measure the impact of using health-related websites which contain experiential and/or factual information. <b>Methods:</b> A multi-method study with five stages. Stage 1: Questionnaire items based upon themes relating to the impact of using health-related websites were constructed following qualitative secondary analysis of 93 interviews relating to patient and carer experiences of health and a recent literature review. Items were assessed by an expert panel. Stage 2: Cognitive interviews were carried out to confirm acceptability of items. Stage 3: Item reduction steps were used to reduce the number of items. Stage 4: The validity and reliability of the remaining items were tested using traditional and modern psychometric methods. Stage 5: The new questionnaire was piloted in a randomised controlled trial. <b>Results:</b> Eighty-two items were constructed according to the key themes identified in Stage 1. Following expert and patient refinement, two independent item pools entered psychometric testing. The first item pool related to general views of using the internet in relation to health and the second item pool related to the impact of using a specific health-related website. Sub-scales and summary scores were found to have high construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The questionnaire showed high completion rates and low counts of missing data in a trial setting. <b>Conclusion:</b> Analysis confirmed good psychometric properties in the eHIQ-Part 1 (11 items) and the eHIQ-Part 2 (26 items). Preliminary findings of trial data demonstrate the acceptability and feasibility of including the eHIQ in randomised controlled trials. This tool will enable the measurement of the impact of health-related websites containing various styles of information and support across a range conditions and facilitate their accurate evaluation in clinical trials.

The purpose of this study was to gain knowledge about how people who identify themselves outside the gender binary system look upon treatment from people in different contexts and how the strategies they use in relation to treatment are expressed. As an approach to this study, we chose to do a qualitative internet study, the empirical material included ten various blogs written by people who identify themselves outside the gender binary system. By using a content analysis we were able to distinguish themes concerning good and bad treatment as well as different forms of coping in our empirical material. The analysis was based on two different kinds of perspectives: queer theory and the concept of coping strategies. The result of this study showed that people who identify themselves outside the gender binary system experience poor treatment more often than good treatment from people in different contexts. One important result that this study showed was that most people described that they felt reduced and ridiculed by, for example, government officials and family members because of their gender identity. We also found that the people in this study used different strategies to cope with the poor treatment they received. A strategy that most of the people in the study used to avoid being treated badly were dressing in gender-neutral clothes. The main conclusion of the study is that it is important that we humans do not assume that all persons belong to the gender binary system. More knowledge about the area is needed to enable us to treat people who identify outside the gender binary system adequately.

The relatively new field of Queer Theory creates ways of thinking about people living without binary gender, but does not provide for a research model with which to give context to the material struggles of such people. Through the use of Internet discussion groups, the current research project attempts to examine the challenges that people who identify with the concept "genderqueer" describe facing as they fashion selves in social interactions; a process which inevitably requires consumer goods that typically only allow for heteronormative binary gender. Findings suggest that there are similarities in how respondents came to identify with "genderqueer," but such similarities are less present in how they understand and apply the concept to themselves. This study shows a potential conflict arising between academic Queer Theory, which seeks to deconstruct identity categories, and a more popular use of "genderqueer" claimed as an identity by some respondents. In conclusion this thesis examines possibilities for activism and marketing that may come out of "genderqueer" as a widely recognizable identity category.

The dominant discourse surrounding academic research libraries today is one of change and scholarship in the humanities has seen a similar revolution in practice. Yet, most of the documented changes in either have been ascribed to the availability of online journal materials. Despite the accessibility of millions of rare, digitized primary resources freely available on the web, little has been done to understand the impact of these materials on either the practice of scholarship or on libraries. The research described in this proposal is an investigation into digitization projects involving rare and closely guarded materials and the effects of these projects on humanities scholarship. This thesis uses both qualitative and quantitative measures to: Assess the impact of digitized primary resources on the work of humanities scholars; To construct a model based on the findings that explains current use of digitized primary sources; and, To discuss the implications of these findings for academic research libraries. The research questions are answered through a detailed analysis of the role of digitization in the field of Tibetan and Himalayan studies. The author presents detailed evidence of how digitization is changing the inputs, practice, and outputs of scholarship in this field, as well as the characteristics of digitization that have led to these changes. Importantly, these findings separate out the success of individual projects from the success of digitization across the field as a whole. Support for community and innovation as well as the presence of critical mass across the field are stressed as the three most significant factors. Finally, the implications of these findings are assessed within a newly proposed model of academic libraries. This “scholar-centric” model is intended to provide both a theoretical framework for the research findings as well as a normative provocation for structuring future research and discussions about the role of academic libraries and their presence online.

Abstract This thesis studies online community as a discursive phenomenon and as an experience. The ethnographic approach employed in this study allows the open exploration of meanings and experiences associated with community by site members, designers and outside commentators in three online environments. Extensive participant observation is supplemented by interviews, surveys and analysis of the interaction surrounding the topic of community. Nexus analysis provides an understanding of social action as the intermingling of historical bodies, interaction orders and discourses embedded in the scene of action. The thesis argues that the concept of community functions as a boundary object, taking different meanings in each context it is employed in. Community can be used to describe strong community experiences or lighter varieties of togetherness online; it can be a pragmatic term simply referring to the user base of a site; or it can incorporate many understandings related to the shared identities and shared practices in the social scene being referred to. The work thus provides a theoretical contribution to ongoing academic discussions related to defining online community, as well as a great deal of empirical knowledge on how experiences of togetherness are created online. Such knowledge may be used to inform future technology development and administrative practices that are sensitive to the many elements affecting social interaction in online spaces. / Tiivistelmä Tämä väitöskirja tarkastelee verkkoyhteisöllisyyttä diskursiivisena ilmiönä sekä kokemuksena. Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan, minkälaisia merkityksiä ja kokemuksia kolmen eri verkkoympäristön jäsenet, kehittäjät ja ulkopuoliset kommentoijat liittävät yhteisöllisyyteen. Tutkimuksen etnografinen lähestymistapa sekä neksusanalyyttinen ote mahdollistavat sen, että sosiaalista toimintaa voidaan analysoida tapahtumapaikkaan eli verkkoympäristöön ja -yhteisöön liittyvien historiataustojen, vuorovaikutusjärjestysten ja diskurssien sulautumana. Tutkimusaineisto koostuu pitkäkestoisesta osallistuvasta havainnoinnista, haastatteluista, kyselytutkimuksista sekä yhteisöllisyyttä käsittelevästä vuorovaikutuksesta tutkituissa verkkoympäristöissä. Väitöstutkimus esittää, että yhteisön käsite toimii rajaobjektina eli se saa eri merkityksiä kussakin kontekstissa, jossa se esiintyy. Ensinnäkin yhteisö-käsitteellä voidaan viitata vahvoihin yhteisöllisyyden kokemuksiin tai keveämpiin yhdessäolon muotoihin. Toiseksi yhteisö-käsite voi toimia käytännöllisenä synonyymina tietyn sivuston käyttäjäkunnalle. Kolmanneksi yhteisö-käsite voi sisältää yhtä aikaa monenlaisia merkityksiä, jotka liittyvät puheenaiheena olevan verkkoympäristön yhteisiin identiteetteihin ja käytänteisiin. Väitöstutkimus tuo uuden teoreettisen näkökulman yhteisö-käsitteen määritelmiä pohtiviin akateemisiin keskusteluihin sekä paljon empiiristä tietoa siitä, miten yhdessäolon kokemukset rakentuvat verkossa. Tätä tietoa erilaisista verkkovuorovaikutusta muokkaavista elementeistä voidaan hyödyntää muun muassa uusien teknologioiden ja ylläpitotoimintojen kehittämisessä.

The increased popularity of tattooing in recent years serves as the backdrop for this research report. As tattooing has grown in popularity it has become increasingly mainstream and has been embraced by people from all walks of life. In particular, a large Internet archive of tattoos has emerged, that contains narratives by people with tattoos as well as numerous pictures of tattoos. In this research report a discourse analysis was conducted on fifty-two of these Internet postings, in order to ascertain what discourse were in use in these postings. Thus, the discourse analysis looked at the ways in which having a tattoo/ being tattooed were constructed within these postings. In order for the discourse analysis to be conducted, the research first embarked on an extensive review of literature, that looked at the academic readings of tattooing. It was found that these readings were varied, and that it was possible to read tattooing in many different ways. Both positive and negative readings of tattoos are highlighted within the literature review. The theoretical backdrop of social constructionism informs the methodology section of the research, as it presents a detailed and contradictory discussion of the field of discourse analysis. Rather than unproblematically claiming to produce a discourse analysis, the research interrogated the term itself, highlighting the contradictions in the field before narrowing to the presentation of a pragmatic approach to discourse analysis that was used in this specific research report. Following the debate in both the literature review and the methodology, three discourses were identified by the discourse analysis conducted. The first discourse relates to tattooing as being a definition or a redefinition of the self, a way to construct a new and complete identity. The second discourse refers to the process of getting a tattoo as providing access to a certain way of speaking that is only available to those who have tattoos. The third discourse identified looks at the construction of the tattoo artist as expert, and the role that the tattoo artist has as a gatekeeper to the discourses of tattooing. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Psychology / unrestricted