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Knowledge Liberation: Understanding Wikipedia in the Digital Democracy Era

Explore the dynamic nature of Wikipedia, its impact on knowledge dissemination, and the challenges surrounding trust and authenticity in online content creation. Discover the evolution of collaborative editing and the debates on accuracy and credibility within the 'We Media' framework. Delve into the advantages and drawbacks of open access to information and the implications of hierarchies in online platforms like Wikipedia for democratic participation.

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Knowledge Liberation: Understanding Wikipedia in the Digital Democracy Era

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Presentation Transcript

  1. Knowledge set free.

  2. Wikipedia and Democracy • In his book ‘We-Think’Leadbeater comments that Wikipedia (amongst other We Media) “is at the heart of the reasons why the web should be good for democracy: by giving more people a voice and the ability to organise themselves; freedom, by giving more people the opportunity to be creative and equality, by allowing knowledge to be set free...” Charles Leadbeater ‘We Think’ (2010)

  3. From ‘The Virtual Revolution’

  4. What is a Wiki? • ‘A wiki is a collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it.’ (‘Wiki’ in Wikipedia) • The users are also the content-producers (i.e. prosumers)

  5. How a Wikipedia article grows • First version of article is typically a short ‘stub’ (e.g., article on your school). • Changes include additions, changes, corrections, formatting, proofreading, vandalism and reversion • Arguments develop about what should be included, emphasis and structure, references. • There is often one topic of heated argument, leading to an uneasy consensus. • The best articles achieve ‘Good Article’ and then ‘Featured Article’ status, usually after intense work by a team of editors collaborating to make it fit Wikipedia standards.

  6. Issues Raised We Media issues regarding quality, trust and authenticity can be applied to Wikipedia: • Quality - there is a lack of ‘academic rigour.’ Many of the entriesare about common knowledge, populist topics, or cover a topic in a shallow way • Authenticity– This knowledge is not from academics. It is often from an unverified source.

  7. Truth, knowledge and Accuracy? • Stephen Fry and Lee Siegel have two very different views of Wikipedia. • Do you consider that you can trust Wikipedia to offer truth, knowledge and accuracy as opposed to an encyclopaedia produced by academic elites?

  8. Issues Raised 2 • Trust - low barriers to entry.Anyone can write articles and edit Wikipedia. • This allows manipulation. Vandals and trolls get involved. • In other words, people may create pages with false facts or deliberately ‘vandalise’ pages. • Therefore should access be limited?

  9. Inevitable Hierarchical Controls • What conclusions can you draw about Wikipedia? • Is it still a genuine example of We Media or have the necessities for “checks and balances” forced it to become yet another example of production by an elitist hierarchy?

  10. Jimmy Wales

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