Dear colleagues,
My paper "Wikipedia. Between lay participation and elite knowledge
representation" has just been published at Information, Communication &
Society.
I´d be interested in your thoughts. Contact me if you don´t have access
to that journal.
Best,
René
Abstract
The decentralized participatory architecture of the Internet challenges
traditional knowledge authorities and hierarchies. Questions arise about
whether lay inclusion helps to ‘democratize’ knowledge formation or if
existing hierarchies are re-enacted online. This article focuses on
Wikipedia, a much-celebrated example which gives an in-depth picture of
the process of knowledge production in an open environment. Drawing on
insights from the sociology of knowledge, Wikipedia's talk pages are
conceptualized as an arena where reality is socially constructed. Using
grounded theory, this article examines the entry for the September 11
attacks and its related talk pages in the German Wikipedia. Numerous
alternative interpretations (labeled as ‘conspiracy theories’) that
fundamentally contradict the account of established knowledge
authorities regarding this event have emerged. On the talk pages, these
views collide, thereby serving as a useful case study to examine the
role of experts and lay participants in the process of knowledge
construction on Wikipedia. The study asks how the parties negotiate
‘what actually happened’ and which knowledges should be represented in
the Wikipedia entry. The conflicting points of view overload the
discursive capacity of the contributors. The community reacts by
marginalizing opposing knowledge and protecting or immunizing the
article against these disparate views. This is achieved by rigorously
excluding knowledge which is not verified by external expert
authorities. Therefore, in this case, lay participation did not lead to
a ‘democratization’ of knowledge production, but rather re-enacted
established hierarchies.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2012.734319
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René König, Dipl.-Soz.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS)
P.O. Box 3640
76021 Karlsruhe
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0) 721 / 608-22209
Web/Skype: renekoenig.eu
Twitter: r_koenig