Wikipedia's Networks and Geographies: Representation and Power in Peer-Produced Content

Overview

Wikipedia captures complex online social interactions among its over 13 million users and has managed to create free online encyclopedias with over 10,000 articles in nearly 100 languages (list of wikipedias). Yet, analysis of geo-tagged articles reveals that large knowledge gaps remain. Contributions from new Internet users in underrepresented regions are key to expanding the coverage and raising the quality of Wikipedia.

As the Wikipedia user community has grown, it has developed norms and expectations about how users should contribute. These norms and practices may at times be opaque and intimidating to new users. These issues are compounded for users who are contributing in a foreign language.

This project brings together research fellows and doctoral candidates at the Oxford Internet Institute aiming to shed light on the incorporation of new users and information into the Wikipedia community. Current research focuses on how new users are perceived, represented, and incorporated into the community, and how, and to what extent, knowledge is shared between various language editions.

People

Researchers

• Heather Ford, Oxford Internet Institute

• Dr Mark Graham, Oxford Internet Institute

• Scott A. Hale, Oxford Internet Institute

• Dr Bernie Hogan, Oxford Internet Institute

• Han-Teng Liao, Oxford Internet Institute

• Dr Taha Yasseri, Oxford Internet Institute

Publications

• Articles
• Chapters
• Conference papers
• Presentations
• Theses

Articles

• Graham, M. (2010) Neogeography and the Palimpsests of Place. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 101 (4) 422-436.
• Graham, M., Zook, M. and Boulton, A. (2012) Augmented Reality in the Urban Environment: contested content and the duplicity of code. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
• Liao, H. (2009) Conflict and Consensus in the Chinese version of Wikipedia. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 28(2) 49–56. doi:10.1109/MTS.2009.932799.
• Liao, H.-T., and Petzold, T. (2011) Analysing geo-linguistic dynamics of the World Wide Web: The use of cartograms and network analysis to understand linguistic development in Wikipedia. Cultural Science 3(2).
• Mestyán, M., Yasseri, T., and Kertész, J. (2012) Early Prediction of Movie Box Office Success based on Wikipedia Activity Big Data. Submitted.
• Petzold, T., Liao, H.-T., Hartley, J., and Potts, J. (2012) A world map of knowledge in the making: Wikipedia's inter-language linkage as a dependency explorer of global knowledge accumulation. Leonardo: Art, Science and Technology 45 (3) 284–284. doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00376
• Yasseri, T., Kornai, A., and Kertész, J. (2012) A practical approach to language complexity: a Wikipedia case study. PLoS ONE 7(11): e48386.
• Yasseri, T., Sumi, R., and Kertész, J. (2012) Circadian patterns of Wikipedia editorial activity: A demographic analysis. PLoS ONE 7(1): e30091.
• Yasseri, T., Sumi, R., Rung, A., Kornai, A., and Kertész, J. (2012) Dynamics of conflicts in Wikipedia. PLoS ONE 7(6): e38869.

Chapters

• Graham, M. (2011) Wiki Space: Palimpsests and the Politics of Exclusion. In: G.Lovink and N.Tkacz (eds) Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.

Conference papers

• Sumi, R., Yasseri, T., Rung, A., Kornai, A., and Kertész, J. (2011) Characterization and prediction of Wikipedia edit wars. Proceedings of the ACM WebSci'11, Koblenz, Germany, June 2011.
• Sumi, R., Yasseri, T., Rung, A., Kornai, A., and Kertész, J. (2011) Edit wars in Wikipedia. IEEE Third International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom), 9-11 October 2011, Boston, MA. pp. 724-727.

Presentations

• Sumi, R., Yasseri, T., Rung, A., Kornai, A., and Kertesz, J. (2011) Edit Wars in Wikipedia. 3rd IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, Boston, MA, October 2011.
• Yasseri, T. (2010) Some linguistic-based and temporal analysis on Wikipedia. 7th Vienna central European conference and COST MP0801 workshop, Vienna, Austria, November 2010.
• Yasseri, T. (2010) Study of social complexity in web-based communities: the case of Wikipedia. Complex Network Seminar, BECS, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, June 2010.
• Yasseri, T. (2011) Characterization and detection of Wikipedia editorial wars. International Workshop on Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems, Zurich, Switzerland, June 2011.
• Yasseri, T. (2011) Circadian and weekly patterns of Wikipedia editors' activity. Complex Network Seminar, BECS, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, July 2011.
• Yasseri, T. (2012) Lessons from Anti-Collaboration Networks in Wikipedia Wars. The Nuffield Social Network Analysis Seminar Oxford, UK, November 2012.
• Yasseri, T. (2012) Revert Network of Wikipedia Editors in Editorial Wars. Aalto Complex Networks Factory Workshop, Porvoo, Finland, June 2012.
• Yasseri, T. (2012) Who Writes Wikipedia, Data-driven Modeling of Wikipedia Editorial Activity. Spring meeting of the German Physical Society Berlin, Germany, March 2012.
• Yasseri, T., Sumi, R., Rung, A., Kornai, A., and Kertesz, J. (2011) Conflict and Cooperation in Wikipedia. Spring meeting of the German Physics Society, Dresden, Germany, March 2011.
• Yasseri, T., Sumi, R., Rung, A., Kornai, A., and Kertesz, J. (2012) Fighting and Writing: Conflicts and Editing Wars in Wikipedia. Spring meeting of the German Physics Society, Berlin, Germany, March 2012.

Theses

• Loubser, M. (2010) Organisational Mechanisms in Peer Productions: The Case of Wikipedia. DPhil Thesis, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.

News

• Catalan Wikipedia Reaches 400,000 Article Milestone

  19 April 2013 Global Voices

  The Catalan version of Wikipedia plays an important role in raising global awareness of the region, people and its language.  Mark Graham says that nowhere in the world has such high visibility for a language is relatively little spoken.

• Free for all? Lifting the lid on a Wikipedia crisis

  17 April 2013 New Scientist

  In an in-depth analysis of the challenges facing Wikipedia in expanding participation beyond the English speaking world, Mark Graham’s research on Wikipedia is referenced and DPhil student Heather Ford is quoted.

• Who Writes the Wikipedia Entries About Where You Live?

  26 March 2013 The Atlantic

  Mark Graham tackles the issue of where our information comes from, and how this should influence the way we interpret it?

• Mathematical model 'describes' how online conflicts are resolved

  20 February 2013 University of Oxford

  Researchers have produced a mathematical model to describe how conflicting opinions are resolved over articles that appear on Wikipedia, the collaboratively-edited encyclopaedia.

• Big data and the death of the theorist

  25 January 2013 Wired

  Mark Graham is skeptical about on the death of the scientific theory at the hands of big data analysis: "when talking about 'big data' and the humanities, there will always be things that are left unsaid, things that haven't been measured or codified".

• Twitter Map Predicts 2012 Presidential Election: Will It Be Right?

  6 November 2012 Huffington Post Technology (US)

  A map of the origins of tweets referencing either Obama or Romney in the month leading up to the US presidential elections predicted the outcome. 

• Election 2012: Twitter map predicts presidential race results

  6 November 2012 Syracuse.com

  A map of the origins of tweets referencing either Obama or Romney in the month leading up to the US presidential elections predicted the outcome. 

• Geography, Big Data, and Augmented Realities

  1 August 2012 Oxford Internet Institute

  New digital dimensions of place profoundly affect the ways that we interact with our urban environments. Dr Mark Graham leads a research project to interrogate these virtual layers of the city, asking what they are, where they are, and why they matter.

• OII Recognised as Educational Institution of the Year at Wikimedia UK's Annual Conference

  15 June 2012 Oxford Internet Institute

  The OII has been recognised as Educational Institution of the Year at the "UK Wikimedian of the Year" awards (12 May 2012). The award was made largely in recognition of the work by OII Research Fellow Dr Mark Graham to map and visualise Wikipedia data.

• Wikipedia world: an interactive guide to every language. Infographic map

  4 April 2012 The Guardian

  In 'Show and Tell' on the Guardian Data Store, Simon Rogers, winner of the OII award for best internet journalist in 2011, highlights the Mapping Wikipedia project which shows millions of articles worldwide in a variety of languages.

• Without Wikipedia, where can you get your facts?

  18 January 2012 BBC News

  On the day that Wikipedia blacks out its English language site, the BBC News magazine explores alternative sources of information. Mark Graham says that Wikipedia is open access, free and that mistakes are quickly corrected.

• Wikipedia Language Maps Created By Oxford Internet Institute's Mark Graham

  13 November 2011 Huffington Post

  "Mark Graham led a team of researchers who broke down Wikipedia's geotagged articles by language and examined the global scope of the encyclopedia. They plotted these data onto maps of the world to show the spread of languages within the encyclopedia."

• This Map Shows the World of Wikipedia Broken Down by Languages

  11 November 2011 Gizmodo US

  "Ever wondered if anyone outside your redneck little town writes about it on Wikipedia? Or if anyone has ever written about Australia in Arabic? Guess no longer, because someone's worked it out for you."

• The world of Wikipedia's languages mapped

  11 November 2011 Guardian Datablog

  What happens if you map every geotagged Wikipedia article - and then analyse it for language use? A team of Oxford University researchers has found out.

• Wikipedia wants more contributions from academics

  29 March 2011 The Guardian

  Mark Graham is quoted in an article examining why academics seem reluctant to donate their expertise to Wikipedia. He says: 'Unfortunately, there is no reward system set up in academia for us to contribute our knowledge in Wikipedia'.

• The playcast: Decoding Wikipedia and following cricket on Twitter

  21 January 2010 Mint.com

  Interview with Mark Graham about the geography of Wikipedia, looking at those places in the world that are well-represented in in wikipedia, and those which aren't.

• Map Reveals Which Countries Wikipedia Discusses Most -- And Least

  12 December 2009 Huffington Post

  Mark Graham's Wikipedia map shows areas best covered by Wikipedia: 'Remarkably there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the fifty-three countries in Africa.'

• Wikipedia's known unknowns

  1 December 2009 The Guardian

  Marks Graham's analysis of Wikipedia entries reveals the world's knowledge deserts - which may provide a second wave of activity for the online encyclopedia.

Blog

• We're hiring: Quantitative Internet Geographer/Sociologist

  Mark Graham on 14 May 2013 13:36PM

  We're hiring a full-time researcher to work with Grant Blank, Bernie Hogan and myself at the Oxford Internet Institute (on a one-year contract in the first instance).The successful candidate will be working on two projects: (1) Helping us to continue our [...]

• Basic geo-lingusitic analysis on Chinese search engine result pages (SERPs)

  Han-Teng Liao on 7 May 2013 03:19AM

  This blog post provides some basic geo-linguistic analysis of the findings explained in the previous blog post. Geo-linguistic information can be extracted from the data to consider the geographic and linguistic factors of the web links . geo-IP First, [...]

• “Wikipedias” (or its copycat) dominate “Chinese” search engine result pages (SERPs)

  Han-Teng Liao on 6 May 2013 12:08PM

  It has been reported that (and speculated why) the global leader of search engines Google has consistently favoured the global leader of user-generated encyclopedias Wikipedia by showing relevant pages frequently and prominently in the search engine [...]

• Wikipedians without borders

  Mark Graham on 29 Apr 2013 14:33PM

  Our team recently held a workshop for Wikipedia editors in Amman in order to discussion barriers to participation and representation in Wikipedia (with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa). The event had participants from all over [...]

• Die Welt in der Wikipedia als Politik der Exklusion

  Mark Graham on 30 Mar 2013 15:27PM

  I've just had my first ever German-language publication be released. For those of you that can speak German, wander over to the following link:Graham, M. 2012. Die Welt in Der Wikipedia Als Politik der Exklusion: Palimpseste des Ortes und selective [...]

• What percentage of edits to English-language Wikipedia articles are from local people?

  Mark Graham on 25 Mar 2013 14:43PM

  As part of our on-going efforts to explore the geographies of participation in Wikipedia, we have calculated the percentage of local edits to articles about places. In other words, this map illustrates the percentage of edits about any country that come [...]

• Article in R-Link: Geographies of Information in Africa

  Mark Graham on 22 Mar 2013 13:49PM

  The Rwandan ICT magazine, R-Link, just published a short piece that I wrote for them titled "Geographies of Information in Africa." The magazine is only available in print form (and presumably only available in Rwanda), so I'm including a scan at the link [...]

• Who edits Wikipedia? A map of edits to articles about Egypt

  Mark Graham on 19 Mar 2013 11:52AM

  This map displays where edits to English Wikipedia articles about Egypt come from. Detail about the method is included at the end of this post; but first a quick discussion of results. One of the first things we notice in the map is that there is broad [...]

• Mapping tweets about the Kenyan presidential debate

  Mark Graham on 12 Feb 2013 16:47PM

  Yesterday saw the first ever televised presidential debate in Kenya. The debate was not only carried across a range of tv and radio stations, but was also live-streamed on YouTube and was actively discussed on Twitter under the #KeDebate13 and #KeDebate [...]

• Where do tweets in Nairobi come from?

  Mark Graham on 12 Feb 2013 21:30PM

  Earlier I posted a map of tweets about the Kenyan presidential debate that showed a distinct geography of information about the event. Doing so made me wonder about the broader patterns of information production in Nairobi through Twitter.So (with the [...]

• 'Wikipedia is where there is all of the information' - defining histories in Peru

  Mark Graham on 3 Feb 2013 09:52AM

  Representation of place, defining one's own histories, a tipping point in which we will see a convergence of humanity, and the end of informational and cultural isolation are all themes covered in the short clip posted above.Wikipedia is interestingly [...]

• Moving jobs, moving workers: examining the threats and opportunities of globalization for workers in Africa - ECAS 2013 session

  Mark Graham on 29 Jan 2013 16:16PM

  Laura Mann and I have put together a session at ECAS 2013 on labour and globalisation in Africa. We have some great speakers and papers lined up. Take a look at the list below or head to the ECAS site for more detail on the session. Hope to see some of [...]

• Short reflection on our Wikipedia workshop in Amman

  Mark Graham on 28 Jan 2013 09:27AM

  I'm on my way home from a two-day workshop that our team organised in Amman, Jordan for Wikipedia editors from the Middle East and North Africa. We had a wide ranging discussion about representation, voice and participation and had participants from all [...]

• Why Wikipedia is no ‘proxy for culture’ (Part 1 of 3)

  Heather Ford on 22 Jan 2013 15:22PM

  First posted at EthnographyMatters.net Last month’s Wired magazine showed an infographic with a headline that read: ‘History’s most influential people, ranked by Wikipedia reach’ with a group of 20 men arranged in hierarchical [...]

• Communication technologies and International Development - OII and PCMLP seminar series

  Mark Graham on 14 Jan 2013 17:43PM

  Communication technologies and International Development The seminar series gathers leading scholars and practitioners to reflect on the influence of new communication technologies on development processes. The seminars will focus on the dramatic [...]

• Mapping Wikipedia Views in the Middle East and North Africa

  Mark Graham on 18 Dec 2012 22:19PM

  Just a quick addendum to the earlier post about the most visible country in Africa on Wikipedia. Below you see the same data (i.e. how many people read or view information on Wikipedia about each of these countries), but focused on the MENA region. [...]

• WikiSym Redefined

  Heather Ford on 13 Dec 2012 17:56PM

  There has been much reflecting and soul-searching about the future of WikiSym in the past year (and probably before that as well). Many felt that the conference was becoming dominated by Wikipedia research and that it needed to grow to encompass more [...]

• What is the most visible country in Africa on Wikipedia?

  Mark Graham on 8 Dec 2012 15:37PM

  As in earlier posts, what we're doing here is measuring the aggregate number of views to all articles in each country. In other words, we're mapping how many people read or view information about any country.So, when looking for the country with the [...]

• Another new post to study Wikipedia at the Oxford Internet Institute: Researcher in Geostatistics

  Mark Graham on 7 Dec 2012 19:51PM

  In addition to our new position in Internet Geography, we are now also hiring a full-time five-month researcher to study the geographies of user-generated content and participation on Wikipedia. We specifically seek to employ a researcher with experience [...]

• The most visible country in Europe (on Wikipedia) is...

  Mark Graham on 24 Nov 2012 09:27AM

  Building on my previous post on the visibility of Wikipedia articles, I wanted to quickly focus on some of our results in Europe. What we are measuring here are the aggregate number of views to all articles in each country. In other words, we're [...]