Understanding localness of knowledge sharing: a study of Naver KiN 'here'

In location-based social Q&A, the questions related to a local community (e.g. local services and places) are typically answered by local residents (i.e. who have the local knowledge). In this work, we wanted to deepen our understanding of the localness of knowledge sharing through investigating the topical and typological patterns related to the geographic characteristics, geographic locality of user activities, and motivations of local knowledge sharing. To this end, we analyzed a 12-month period Q&A dataset from Naver KiN "Here" and a supplementary survey dataset from 285 mobile users. Our results revealed several unique characteristics of location-based social Q&A. When compared with conventional social Q&A sites, Naver KiN "Here" had very different topical/typological patterns. Naver KiN "Here" exhibited a strong spatial locality where the answerers mostly had 1-3 spatial clusters of contributions, the topical distributions varied widely across different districts, and a typical cluster spanned a few neighboring districts. In addition, we uncovered unique motivators, e.g. ownership of local knowledge and sense of local community. The findings reported in the paper have significant implications for the design of Q&A systems, especially location-based social Q&A systems.