Dear all,
Hope you are well and safe.
I am thrilled to reach out to you on behalf of the Communications
Department at The Wikimedia Foundation to share information about a new
short-term test campaign through which we hope to learn more about engaging
Indian digital audiences, primarily the youth.
Emerging from the Medium Term Plan
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019>,
this test is aimed at strengthening the awareness levels of Wikimedia, our
free knowledge mission, and growing affinity with our readers in India,
especially the youth.
Firstly, let us introduce ourselves- The Communications Department.
Communications <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications> is a Wikimedia
Foundation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation>
department. The Communications Department performs a variety of functions
for the Foundation, such as building awareness of Wikimedia and its
projects, maintaining relationships with the media, producing content for
the Wikimedia Foundation website
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_web…>,
managing the community blog Diff <https://diff.wikimedia.org/> and
Wikimedia social media
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Social_media>
platforms, facilitating communications with Wikimedia communities,
informing research into emerging global audiences, developing creative
materials, and coordinating campaigns to engage new audiences for Wikimedia
projects like Project Rewrite
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Project_Rewrite>and Wiki
Unseen. <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications/Wiki_Unseen>
What is #KnowWithWiki all about?
This is a truly integrated effort where members of various teams within the
Foundation came together to develop a plan to engage young readers in India
in a manner that demonstrates the value of Wikipedia, highlighting the role
it already plays in helping them know their world better and promoting free
knowledge.
The problem: Wikipedia readership in India is high. It is currently ranked
#4 in website traffic in India with an average of approximately 2 pages a
visit. Unfortunately, according to a market research
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QHwaKUKJqxuzmfNx55KFlA-CBYPAKzMWmYP5heu…>
carried out by the Wikimedia Foundation in 2020, only 31% of the Indian
internet users have heard of Wikipedia, and strikingly, only 26% of
internet users aged 18-24 years were aware of Wikipedia. The gap between
usage and awareness indicates that there is a large number of young people
who use Wikipedia and are not aware of us and therefore have no affinity or
value for it.
Why India?
Engaging young internet users and unaware Wikipedia readers to increase
affinity and perceived value is key to the sustained growth of Wikipedia
and all our projects. The Indian youth may be viewing or using our content
through different platforms e.g. seeing Wikipedia content through search
engines, but there is a lack of awareness among this audience that this
information comes from the efforts of our diverse volunteer community that
spends time and effort in curating relevant and reliable information on
Wikipedia and its sister projects.
We wish to engage with this very audience by providing them more relatable
examples on how Wikipedia plays/can play an active role in their efforts to
gather fact-based, researched information around worldly topics.
Furthermore, by capturing and studying data emerging from this test, we
will be able to learn, assess and improve our future engagements in the
country
Our Plan
Starting May 2022, we will be engaging Indian influencers under a
campaign #KnowWithWiki
& “Know Your World Better”
For this activity, we are collaborating with selected popular GenZ
influencers to showcase the relevance of Wikipedia among the younger Indian
audience in their daily lives. The primary platform of activation will be
on Instagram, which is a platform that has the highest number of users from
India, and has emerged as the most preferred social media platform2 among
Indian youth according to a 2020 study3. Instagram influencers will
highlight use of Wikipedia in their posts on topical content and social
awareness topics.
These influencers will release their own content on their Instagram handles
covering topics relevant to our target audience, while seeding references
of Wikipedia and the vast knowledge available on the online encyclopedia.
This will be complemented with our own social media channels sharing
content around the experiment, focussed towards the Indian audience. The
general public would be encouraged to follow and participate in the
campaign online using #KnowWithWiki.
Why are we doing this?
This activity follows the the successful completion of a similar activity
in South Africa- #WikipediabyUs, where we collaborated with South Africa’s
young creative community by giving them a platform to create informative
content based on Wikipedia articles. #WikipediabyUs, demonstrated young
creatives using Wikipedia to expand a topic of interest with their
audiences.
It is a part of our sustained endeavor to make deeper strides in learning
from different contexts on improving understanding of the Wikimedia
movement and its projects. We want to raise awareness about how Wikipedia
and the free knowledge movement is present in the daily lives of Indian
audiences.
This test would also enable us to tackle some of the misconceptions around
Wikipedia in the Indian digital space, via explaining how the Wikipedia
volunteer community creates and improves content on the platform based on
up-to-date, relevant and verifiable sources.
By engaging the 18-24 age group we aim to-
-
GET GenZ adults aged 18-24
-
WHO read Wikipedia
-
TO see Wikipedia as relevant
-
BY showing them how often they call on us to know and do more
How can you get involved?
You can create your own content on social media to describe how you use
Wikipedia in your everyday life to know your world and the things that
interest you better. Make sure you use #KnowWithWiki and #Wikipedia to add
to the campaign impact!
If you would like to know more and get involved or share any suggestions,
please reach out to me by email.
Thank you warmly for your time and interest.
On behalf of the Core Team- Khanyi, Mathoto, Olga, Rachit and Vidhu.
--
Khanyi Mpumlwana (they/she)
Creative Director
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
**Please excuse any brevity or typos, messages are often sent in a hurry*
Dear Indian Wikimedians,
As many of you may have known, one of our fellow Wikimedian was arrested by
Uttar Pradesh Police in October 2020. His name is Siddique Kappan (His
wikimedia username is User:Sidheeq). He is from Kerala, and he was active
in Wikimedia projects (mainly in Malayalam Wikipedia) until his arrest.
Incidently he is a journalist and he was arrested from the home of Hathras
rape and murder victim while reporting the victim Dalit girl's family
members. UP Police has slapped Sedition, Terrorism as well as UAPA charges
against him.
Kappen is diabetic and now COVID positive. He was admitted to hospital only
after he collapsed in the jail cell. With his deteriorating health, it was
accused that Kappan was chained to hospital bed like an animal. Today's
news reports say that he is in critical condition. (You could always google
"Siddique Kappan")
As a tone deaf people I don't expect anything from this mail, I just wish
to share the information.
Stay Inside, Stay Complementary (non-critical), Stay safe, Stay healthy.
User:Praveenp
-------------
Siddique's en.wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sidheeq
Dear Wikimedians,
Greetings for the coming Holi!
CIS-A2K is glad to share this update with you. We have started developing
partnerships with various institutions in the North East region of India
since 2019. We conceptualised the GLAM project with an organization
named *Research
Institute of World's Ancient Traditions, Cultures and Heritage* (RIWATCH),
a non-profit research and community based organisation in Arunachal Pradesh
during the year 2020 and proposed it in our 2020-21 plan. But due to the
pandemic, the process was delayed. We have launched a GLAM-Wiki project
with RIWATCH from March 2022 in collaboration with the West Bengal
Wikimedians User Group, which will be helping in coordination and execution
of this project. A Wikimedian in Residence has been assigned at RIWATCH to
document, organize and upload the data and content of the rich collection
of the institute focusing on the oral traditions, language and culture of
different tribes in Arunachal Pradesh. The orientation and planning
meetings were conducted with RIWATCH members and a local tribal
organisation named Idu Mishmi Cultural & Literary Society to develop the
GLAM project. After the training of WiR, the GLAM work on Wikimedia Commons
has already been started. The details can be seen here - Commons category
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Research_Institute_of_World%27s…>
and GLAM project page <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:RIWATCH>
.
We welcome your suggestions.
Regards,
Subodh & Bodhisattwa
on behalf of CIS-A2K and West Bengal Wikimedians User Group (respectively)
