Professor Philip Howard
Professor of Internet Studies
Philip N. Howard is a professor of sociology, information, and international affairs. He is Director of the Programme on Democracy and Technology, and is a Professorial Fellow of Balliol College.
Published on
14 Oct 2016
14 Oct 2016
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WikiEdits bots are a class of Twitter bot that announce edits made by Wikipedia users editing under government IP addresses, with the goal of making government editing activities more transparent. This article examines the characteristics and impact of transparency bots, bots that make visible the edits of institutionally affiliated individuals by reporting them on Twitter. We map WikiEdits bots and their relationships with other actors, analyzing the ways in which bot creators and journalists frame governments’ participation in Wikipedia. We find that, rather than providing a neutral representation of government activity on Wikipedia, WikiEdits bots and the attendant discourses of the journalists that reflect the work of such bots construct a partial vision of government contributions to Wikipedia as negative by default. This has an impact on the public discourse about governments’ role in the development of public information, a consequence that is distinct from the current discourses that characterize transparency bots.
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Ford, H., Dubois, E., & Puschmann, C. (2016). Automation, Algorithms, and Politics | Keeping Ottawa Honest—One Tweet at a Time? Politicians, Journalists, Wikipedians and Their Twitter Bots. International Journal Of Communication, 10, 24. Retrieved from http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/6183
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