Analysing Neutral Perspectives on Documenting Knowledge through Wikipedia - Case Study Example

Social Media: Participatory Journalism: Analysing Neutral Perspectives on Documenting Knowledge through Wikipedia Introduction In recent times, participatory journalism has been on the rise in the form of podcasts, blogs, and other Web-based reporting. Participatory journalism encompasses a citizen or citizens playing an active role in the process of gathering, reporting, analysing and circulating news and information (Kolodzy, 2006, p. 220). Wikipedia is one of the sources of information that can be said to be characterised by participatory journalism given that it involves collaborative reporting and editing for the Web, as described by (Kolodzy, 2006, p. 220). The aim of participation is to ensure that the information that is disseminated is independent, reliable, precise, comprehensive and relevant as required by any democratic process. This is achieved through discussions, criticisms, and arguments over any topical issue as happens on the Web 2.0 media such as Twitter, Facebook and many others. Through such media, a rumour may be dismissed or accepted based on the views of various participating parties. The downside of participatory journalism however is that the information that is disseminated may be biased towards the interest of the information’s originator. Hence, information media that attract participatory input may not be entirely trusted to be neutral. The information posted may even be dangerous. For instance, the Saudi Arabian government recalled its ambassador in Egypt after the storming of the embassy by demonstrators in what was sparked by an Internet report regarding the arrest of an Egyptian lawyer in Egypt (Heavens, 2012). In another case, Mr. Seigenthaler, a renowned American journalist, realised that some Wikipedia content claimed that he was perceived to have been perpetrator in the assassinations of both John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. While Mr. Seigenthaler termed the information “malicious” and “scurrilous”, it had stood uncorrected for over four months (Read, 2006, p. 4). Apparently, the information was a hoax posted by an unknown contributor. Scope of the paper In view of his background information, this paper seeks to address the neutrality of Wikipedia as a source of information. The paper makes it clear that Wikipedia, like all other sources of information on the Internet whose content is not thoroughly scrutinised, is not neutral. It refers to Forte and Bruckman’s (2008) investigation of Wikipedia as a decentralized regulatory body of individuals from differing disciplines, as well as other sources containing information about Wikipedia and participatory journalism. By doing this, the paper seeks to identify the disparities in the neutrality of Wikipedia, examine to what extent Wikipedia enables participatory journalism and the effect that this has on neutrality, and identifies disparities in maintaining a neutral approach to knowledge as cultural capital, by examining specific examples of knowledge documentation through Wikipedia. Analysis of Wikipedia Forte and Bruckman (2008) describe Wikipedia as “an organisation with highly refined policies, norms, and a technological architecture that supports organisational ideals of consensus building and discussion”. They note that governance in the site is becoming increasingly decentralised as the community expands. The trend of decentralisation is apparent with respect to both content related decision making processes as well as social structures that control user behaviour (Forte & Bruckman, 2008). Along the same line, Lih (2004, p. 3) describes Wikipedia as an Internet-based, encyclopaedia that is volunteer-contributed, which has become a popular online reference. Wikipedia has thousands of contributors and has emerged as the one of the largest examples of participatory journalism. It enables many-to-many communication among users involved in editing articles, and all working towards maintaining a neutral point of view – which is Wikipedia’s motto (Lih, 2004, p. 3). However, it is the “neutral point of view” that raises questions, and so it is worth asking, is Wikipedia information really neutral? This question is answered in the following discussion. Participatory journalism versus the neutrality of Wikipedia Wikipedia’s form of decentralised management could perhaps be the reason why the site has many volunteers contributing input. As Forte and Bruckman (2008) put it, as the outside community continues to grow, it has become necessary for governance mechanisms to shift outward into the community. There is no gainsaying the fact that the numbers of Wikipedia users has increased, and so has the number of contributors and editors. Ordinarily, it would be expected that with a high number of contributors, Wikipedia would have very neutral information given that the information is modified from different angles and from different points of view. But this is not always true as will be discussed. What could be true is the assertion by Fleras (2011, p. 210), that “perhaps no social media reflects the Web 2.0 participatory nature better than Wikipedia” which depends on hundreds of volunteer administrators to generate, edit and maintain content. By 2011, Wikipedia had more 17 million articles (Fleras, 2011, p. 210), exhibiting a very high level of participatory journalism. When it comes to neutrality, there is much to question about Wikipedia. According Fleras (2011, p. 210), the content of Wikipedia is created not by experts per se but by editors who voluntarily submit or revise information with an objective of duplicating an online and bottom-up variant of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In fact, it has been claimed that the error ratio between Wikipedia and Britannica is small (Fleras, 2011, p. 210; Dondio et al, 2006). It is also true that some mechanisms have been implemented to improve the quality of contributions to Wikipedia, but trust in the content of the site has been seriously questioned (Dondio et al, 2006). A burning issue arises with regard to who is in charge of the overall quality of Wikipedia information, and this leads to the gatekeeper role. According to Domingo et al (2008, p. 326), the gatekeeper function in journalism indicates journalists’ claim to be the ones who determine what the public needs to be informed of, as well as how and when such information should be disseminated. This role is maintained and implemented by professional practices and rules that are deemed to assure the quality and neutrality of professional journalism (Domingo et al, 2008, p. 326). However, when it comes to Wikipedia, the strategy applied is somehow counterintuitive because it provides no gate keeping function to ensure that quality material is being contributed (Lih, 2004, p. 4). Lih (2004) further argues that unlike typical imaginative efforts, no confirmation of qualifications or identity is required to participate and there is no reputation tracking system within the wiki community. Wikipedia’s neutrality is compromised further by the speed at which content can be modified. Dondio et al (2006) point out that the most visited and edited articles can be modified at least 50 times a day, which affects their validity. In addition, since human-trust tools such as feedback and recommendation need time to work properly (Dondio et al, 2006), the Wikipedia content is subject to distortion in this context. In fact, Wikipedia admits that there is a systematic bias because of its tendency to “refract any reality through the prism (filter or lens) of the average Wikipedian. Further, Wikipedia is so laden with preconceptions because its contributor base can hardly claim to be impartial in the gathering, content and dissemination of knowledge (Fleras, 2011, p. 210). According to Fleras (2011, p. 210), certain ideas that define what is desirable, acceptable, accurate and valuable are deeply ingrained in Wikipedia’s design, organisation, detail and functioning. Thus, readers who are uninformed of these prejudices and distortions may unconsciously accept a Wikipedia opinion as a neutral opinion. For instance, there is no clear definition of the word “mana” in Wikipedia. The site only provides what can be termed as opinions regarding the word based on different cultures. Wikipedia and cultural capital There is a likelihood that like other forms of technology-intensive projects, Wikipedia may be wholly or partly motivated by the satisfaction of contribution and collaboration and producing cultural capital (Papathanassopoulos, 2011, p. 196). With contributors who are not experts in their areas of contribution, it is likely that Wikipedia’s content will contain bias based on what the contributors perceive as they are driven by the desire to contribute, rather than to be impartial. This can be said of the dissemination of information after the September 11 attacks. Andrus (2005) wrote that what the US needed after the attack was something that could handle rapidly evolving, complex threats. He argued that intelligence organisations needed to be adaptive and driven to decisions by bottom-up cooperation by something like Wikipedia (Bingham, Conner & Pink, 2010, p. 104). Although Wikipedia was not a perfect solution to the situation, it looked like an exciting way for intelligence analysts to capture, share and critique reports of conditions in the world (Bingham, Conner & Pink, 2010, p. 104). In such situations, what is new and captivating attracts more attention than core information that everyone already knows. Hence, Wikipedia helps to promote cultural capital, but again, as mentioned earlier, the opinion given by contributors is likely to be perceived as the truth. Conclusion It is evident that while there are mechanisms to ensure that Wikipedia content is accurate and reliable, its quality can be eroded by the open nature of contributing input. The information can be impartial mainly because anyone with access can edit it. Since it takes time to verify what is accurate and give recommendations, most of the content will pass as being neutral. Participatory journalism aims to ensure that information is independent, trustworthy, precise, all-inclusive and relevant as required by any democratic process. However, this is also a likely source of bias as the contributors may have their own prejudices. Thus, even though the information in Wikipedia may not necessarily be inaccurate, it may be distorted by prejudiced tendencies of the contributors if such content is not critically scrutinised as discussed in the paper. References Andrus, D. C. (2005). “The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community”. 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