Making

KnowledgeHow Wikipedia shapes the

world

Dr. Adrianne WadewitzMellon Digital Scholarship FellowCenter for Digital Learning and Research Occidental College18 April 2013

Wikipedia policies and the

construction of knowledge

Source: xkcd

What is a fact? Sources: The Human Stain

Competing narratives: History of the Catholic Church

Framing information: Rape and pregnancy controversies in United

States elections, 2012 (today)

Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012 (first version, 21 August 2012)

Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012 (20 November 2012)

Editing Wikipedia is as…

Jane Austen

…easy as the

click of a button.

…but not everyone does.

The encyclopedia anyonecan edit…

Statistics and image: Wikimedia Foundation

(Khanna 2012)

Statistics and image: Wikimedia Foundation,

(Khanna 2012)

Spatial distribution of edits for the English Wikipedia in one day

Source: Zachte (2011)

Every edit is political

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons, User: Salimfadhley

Consent

• ―Let's call this a matter of

perspective. I am a

woman. If anyone ever

shows up in a delivery

room where I am giving

birth and attempts to use

"she's lying down" as a

pretext to take

photographs without my

permission, I will leap

from the gurney, tackle

the SOB, and eat the

camera.‖ – User:Durova

Source: The moment of birth

―Feminine‖ content Jimmy Wales: ―We have over

100 articles on different Linux distributions, some of them quite obscure … and [they have] virtually no impact on the broader culture, but we think that’s perfectly fine.‖ The same editors who deem those Linux articles important might dismiss articles on makeup, say, as ―some fluffy girl topic‖—despite significant cultural impact. (Bosch, 2012)

Image: CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

….or, am I a man?

….or, am I a cyborg?

―The cyborg is a creature in a

post-gender world‖

Donna Haraway, ―The Cyborg Manifesto‖

(1991)

―The cyborg is a kind of

disassembled and reassembled,

postmodern collective and

personal self. This is the self

feminists must code.‖

Donna Haraway, ―The Cyborg Manifesto‖

(1991)

Bibliography Antin, Judd; Yee, Raymond; Cheshire, Coye; and Nov, Oded. ―Gender Differences in

Wikipedia Editing.‖ ACM Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. 2011. Bosch, Torie. ―How Kate Middleton’s Wedding Gown Demonstrates Wikipedia’s Woman

Problem.‖ Slate (13 July 2012).

Cohen, Noam. ―Wikipedia Ponders Its Gender-Skewed Contributions.‖ The New York Times(30 January 2011).

Glott, Ruediger; Ghosh, Rishab. ―Analysis of Wikipedia Survey Data: Age and Gender Differences.‖ UNU-MERIT. March 2010.

Haraway, Donna. ―A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.‖ Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Khanna, Ayush. ―Nine out of ten Wikipedians continue to be men: Editor Survey.‖ Wikimedia Foundation Blog (27 April 2012).

Reagle, J., & Rhue, L. ―Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica.‖ International Journal of Communication 5:0 (8 August 2011).

Reagle, Joseph. ―’Free as in sexist?’ Free culture and the gender gap.‖ First Monday 18.1 (2 January 2013).

Wikipedia Gender Gap Listserv Archives. March 2011. Zachte, Erik. ―Wikipedia edits visualized.‖ Infodisiac. 9 May 2011.