The Falklands/Malvinas war taken to the Wikipedia realm: a multimodal discourse analysis of cross-lingual violations of the Neutral Point of View (original) (raw)
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Wikipedia is an open collaboration, global, multilingual project. Its guidelines and policies direct the collaboration process into a vision of objective and neutral encyclopedic knowledge. However, coherence of that knowledge, and the outcomes of the collaborative process on the same topic, can sometimes vary dramatically across different languages. Our goal was to explore what these differences are, and to see how they are contextualized in a case of a contested and conflictive topic. The empirical focus was on the Republic of Kosovo, a recently formed country in Southeast Europe still seeking full international recognition. The study explores the social, cultural and political tensions through following the contextualization of this topic in three different Wikipedia communities: Serbian, Croatian and English. A constructivist (Charmaz, 1998) and substantive grounded theory of the process was created by following a two-step coding process. Three coders were active in different st...
Discourse, Context & Media, 2020
The aim of this study is to identify linguistic categories which could be bias indicators in both English and Spanish versions of Wikipedia articles about international conflicts. In this sense, Appraisal analysisparticularly, engagement-is used to examine whether the articles are biased in favor of a group (ingroup bias). In the present study, only two kinds of these resources are focused: attribution and counter. The hypothesis we are discussing is that, in these articles, engagement categories serve as linguistic indicators of in-group bias. The analysis shows important associations between engagement resources and in-group bias. The findings seem to confirm that bias is usually expressed implicitly rather than explicitly.
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SSRN Journal
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Societal Controversies in Wikipedia Articles
CHI'15: 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings, 2015
Collaborative content creation inevitably reaches situations where different points of view lead to conflict. We focus on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone may edit, where disputes about content in controversial articles often reflect larger societal debates. While Wikipedia has a public edit history and discussion section for every article, the substance of these sections is difficult to phantom for Wikipedia users interested in the development of an article and in locating which topics were most controversial. In this paper we present Contropedia, a tool that augments Wikipedia articles and gives insight into the development of controversial topics. Contropedia uses an efficient language agnostic measure based on the edit history that focuses on wiki links to easily identify which topics within a Wikipedia article have been most controversial and when.
2013
The purpose of this study is to scrutinize how neutrality is constructed in Wikipedia corporate entries. Neutrality is a complex concept widely discussed in Internet studies. Here we focus on Wikipedia, where Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is one of the core content policies. The full editing histories of the Wikipedia entries of 14 Finnish corporations were analyzed utilizing the concept of discursive struggle by Laclau and Mouffe. We identified the particular expressions (i.e. key signifiers) that caused NPOV-claims or discussions of neutrality, in order to find out what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality, and how this in general affects the editing of corporate entries. Our findings demonstrate that the ideal of neutrality is discursively contested by two-directed attempts: firstly, promotional language, and secondly by incorporating corporate critique to the entry. As the corporate representations in the entries fluctuate over time, the ambiguity of neutrality becomes visible.
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Cultural Differences in the Understanding of History on Wikipedia
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This paper sheds light on cultural differences in the understanding of historical military events between Chinese, English, French, German, and Swedish Wikipedia language editions. Differences in understanding historical events can lead to intercultural misinterpretation and conflicts that cause negative consequences for international relations. We identified the most important historical events, mined cross-cultural relations, investigated word usage in war-related pages and performed network, complexity, and sentiment analysis. We also analyzed the usage of war-related words and the quantity of war-related events mentioned in different languages. Our findings suggest that World War I and World War II are the most important historical events within English, French, and German cultures and English Wikipedia contains more violence and war-related content, with a higher level of complexity than other language editions.
Art+Feminism, 2021
In a historical moment typified by concerns about the proliferation of propaganda and misinformation online, we ask to what extent are contributions from and content about marginalized communities affected by guidelines about reliability in three language versions of the world’s largest crowdsourced online encyclopedia? This report takes on this question and addresses how Wikipedia trainers involved in the Art+Feminism movement approach the reliable source guidelines in French, English and Spanish Wikipedias. Based on community conversations and interpretative analysis of the guidelines, the report shows that on Wikipedia source authority is facilitated by social and technical processes which elevate the decisions of a small number of self-selected editors. Trainers play an essential role in translating guidelines and processes, and take on additional labor in managing editorial friction. We also highlight that translations of texts about reliability between different language versions of Wikipedia tend to center Western knowledge formations. This report describes our methodology; our findings; and the effects for marginalized communities and readers writ large. Reliability should not mean exclusion: we end with recommendations for enacting more inclusive and diverse Wikipedias.
The Bias Against Israel on English Wikipedia
WJC, 2024
The empowering ethos of Wikipedia emphasizes the centrality of the project's commitment to neutrality and the sharing of knowledge worldwide. However, this report demonstrates how biases within Wikipedia can distort the dissemination of information and perpetuate harmful stereotypes. The report delves into the bias against Israel observed in English Wikipedia following the October 7th attack on Israel and the subsequent war. Based on analysis content and interviews with Israeli Wikipedians, the report demonstrates how certain articles related to Israel perpetuate damaging stereotypes and misconceptions. This can be seen in the articles’ Terminology, Framing and Lack of Context, The Omission of Significant Details, One-Sided Sources, Emphasis on Negative Examples and Biased Links. To address these concerns, the report puts forth key recommendations aimed at institutionalizing bias research through initiatives such as funding and scholarships. It advocates for the development of best practices to ensure neutral content curation, while also emphasizing the importance of fostering community engagement in discussions surrounding neutrality. Furthermore, the report emphasizes the necessity of regularly publishing transparency reports to uphold standards of neutrality and accountability within Wikipedia.