https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/
wikihistories 2023: Wikipedia and its implications for memory (and forgetting)
Call for papers
From its earliest beginnings shortly before
911,[1]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt1> Wikipedia has documented
history as it happens.
Revolutions,[2]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt2> terrorist
attacks,[3]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt3>
earthquakes,[4]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt4> fires and floods
have been written about on the platform, often within minutes of the first recorded
protests, attacks, and blazes. This practice of documentation, conducted by volunteers who
are connected by shared interest rather than shared expertise, falls between the
disciplines of digital journalism and history. What does Wikipedia’s coverage of events
“that haven’t even stopped happening
yet”[5]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt5> mean for history-making on
the platform? Researchers have noted that recent events are covered more than early
history[6]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt6>t6>, and stories are more
often presented from colonialist rather than local
perspectives.[7]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt7> More recently,
Wikipedia has been uncovered as a site of both conscious forgetting and the “frenzy of
commemorations,”[8]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt8> a venue for
nationalist propaganda projecting particular stories that favour particular ideologies and
social groups.
* How does Wikipedia construct history and collective memory?
* Does Wikipedia enable the forging of a collective memory via
consensus?[9]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt9>
* How are some versions of the past pushed to the fringes?
* What gets remembered and what gets forgotten?
* How can we study history-making on the platform?
In this first annual workshop of the wikihistories project, we will take stock of what we
know and what we still need to know about Wikipedia as a history-making platform. We do
this because Wikipedia’s representation of history matters. Its facts travel through
knowledge ecosystems and rest as answers to questions provided by digital assistants,
search engines and other AI-enhanced tools. Wikipedia’s claims to neutrality are more a
hope than a promise, a guise that hides the dreams and ideologies of the individuals and
groups that understand its power and are determined to master its form.
We invite Wikipedia scholars and researchers to participate in a two-day symposium being
held online on the 8th and 9th of June. The symposium will be held for about 4 hours at
different times each day to accommodate a range of global timezones. Please send an
abstract of 250-300 words to michael.falk@uts.edu.au<mailto:michael.falk@uts.edu.au>
before March 17 (close of day anywhere in the world) responding to any of the above
questions. We expect a mixture of both analytical and methodological contributions for the
event which will be held annually for the 3 years of the wikihistories project.
Confirmed Speakers
This year’s symposium will begin with a keynote by Dr Simon
Sleight<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/simon-sleight>, Reader in Urban History,
Historical Youth Cultures and Australian History at King’s College, London. Dr Sleight is
the co-editor of “History, Memory and Public Life: The Past in the Present” and will
provide a rich background to our investigations of collective memory from the history
discipline for an interdisciplinary audience.
________________________________
[
1]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref1> Brian Keegan, “An
Encyclopedia with Breaking News,” in Wikipedia@ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution,
ed. Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2019), 55–70,
https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12366.003.0007.
[
2]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref2> Heather Ford, Writing the
Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2022).
[
3]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref3> Bunty Avieson, “Breaking
News on Wikipedia: Collaborating, Collating and Competing,” First Monday, April 30, 2019,
https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i5.9530; Christian Pentzold, “Fixing the Floating Gap: The
Online Encyclopaedia Wikipedia as a Global Memory Place,” Memory Studies 2, no. 2 (May
2009): 255–72,
https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698008102055.
[
4]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref4> Brian Keegan, Darren
Gergle, and Noshir Contractor, “Hot off the Wiki: Dynamics, Practices, and Structures in
Wikipedia’s Coverage of the Tōhoku Catastrophes,” in Proceedings of the 7th International
Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym ’11: The 7th International Symposium on
Wikis and Open Collaboration, Mountain View California: ACM, 2011), 105–13,
https://doi.org/10.1145/2038558.2038577.
[
5]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref5> “All the News That’s Fit
to Print Out,” New York Times (Online) (New York: New York Times Company, July 1, 2007),
2223136739, ProQuest Central,
http://ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/blogs-podc…
[
6]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref6> Graham, Mark, Scott Hale,
and Monica Stephens. “Geographies of the World’s Knowledge.” (2011).
[
7]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref7> Brendan Luyt, “The Nature
of Historical Representation on Wikipedia: Dominant or Alterative Historiography?,”
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 62, no. 6 (2011):
1058–65,
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21531; Bunty Avieson, “Two Wikipedias in Bhutan:
Problems and Solutions for Knowledge Equity in the Digital Age,” Asian Journal of
Communication 32, no. 5 (September 3, 2022): 399–416,
https://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2021.1937248.
[
8]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref8> Paul Ricoeur, Memory,
History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004), 85.
[
9]<https://wikihistories.net/2023-conference/#ftnt_ref9> Brendan Luyt, “Wikipedia,
Collective Memory, and the Vietnam War,” Journal of the Association for Information
Science and Technology 67, no. 8 (2016): 1956–61,
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23518;
Pentzold, “Fixing the Floating Gap”; Marlon Twyman, Brian C. Keegan, and Aaron Shaw,
“Black Lives Matter in Wikipedia: Collaboration and Collective Memory around Online Social
Movements,” in Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative
Work and Social Computing, 2017, 1400–1412,
https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998232.
---------------------------
Dr Heather Ford
Associate Professor
Head of Discipline Digital and Social
Media<https://www.uts.edu.au/future-students/communication/digital-and-social-media>
| Acting Co-Director Centre for Research on Education in a Digital
Society<https://www.uts.edu.au/research/centre-research-education-digital-society>
(CREDS) | Data Science Institute<https://www.uts.edu.au/data-science-institute/>
Associate Member | Center for Media in
Transition<https://www.uts.edu.au/research/centre-media-transition> Research
Associate |
School of
Communication<https://www.uts.edu.au/future-students/communication/about-communication/welcome-school-communication>,
University of Technology, Sydney<https://www.uts.edu.au/> (UTS)
w:
hblog.org<http://hblog.org/> / t:
@hfordsa<http://www.twitter.com/hfordsa>
Latest writing:
“Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital
Age”<https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262046299/writing-the-revolution/> MIT Press, out
now
“Why I spent 10 years studying one Wikipedia
article<https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-shaping-history-why-i-s…
The Conversation, Friday Essay
I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and the Boorooberongal People of the
Dharug Nation upon whose ancestral lands our campus now stands. I pay respect to the
Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of
knowledge for these lands that were never ceded.
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