I do not know of directly measured social or economical impact, but there are at least
some indicators of the dependency on Wikipedia as a free information source for modern
societies and professions, maybe that helps:
• A. Head and M. Eisenberg. How college students use the web to conduct everyday life
research. First Monday, 16(4), 2011. ISSN 13960466. URL
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/
index.php/fm/article/view/3484. For decision making: “...turning to search engines and
Wikipedia almost as much as they did to friends and family”
• K.-S. Kim, E. Yoo-Lee, and S.-C. Joanna Sin. Social media as information source:
Undergraduates’ use and evaluation behavior. Proceedings of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 48(1):1–3, 2011.
• J. Beck. Doctors’ #1 source for healthcare information: Wikipedia. The Atlantic, 2014.
URL
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/doctors%2D1%2Dsource%2Dfo…
2Dhealthcare%2Dinformation%2Dwikipedia/284206/.
General population:
"As of May 2010, 53% of American internet users look for information on Wikipedia, up
from 36% of internet users the first time we asked about Wikipedia usage in February
2007". (
http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/01/13/wikipedia-past-and-present/ ; sadly,
there doesn’t seem to be a newer version of that poll available)
42% used Wikipedia at least once a week in 2016 in Germany:
http://www.ard-zdf-onlinestudie.de/index.php?id=559 (n=1508 German speakers,
representative for the German population) and it has been increasing quite steadily from
2007 (20%) until 2013 (32%)
http://www.ard-zdf-onlinestudie.de/fileadmin/Onlinestudie/PDF/Eimeren_Frees… , page 7
(“zumindest einmal wöchentlich”), for “at least sometimes” it’s up to around 70%
Best,
Fabian
On 24.01.2017, at 23:19, Aaron Halfaker
<ahalfaker(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Wikipedia has probably had some substantial external impacts. Are there any studies
quantifying them? Maybe increased scientific literacy? Or maybe GDP rises with access to
Wikipedia?
Are there any studies that have explored how Wikipedia has affected economic or social
issues?
I'm looking for any references you've got.
-Aaron
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Gruß,
Fabian
—
Dr. Fabian Flöck
Researcher
Computational Social Science department
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Unter Sachsenhausen 6-8, 50667 Cologne, Germany
Tel: + 49 (0) 221-47694-208
fabian.floeck(a)gesis.org
www.gesis.org
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