Fact factories: Wikipedia and the power to represent

Thesis

Wikipedia is no longer just another source of knowledge about the world. It is fast becoming a central source, used by other powerful knowledge brokers like Google and Bing to offer authoritative answers to search queries about people, places and things and as information infrastructure for a growing number of Web applications and services. Researchers have found that Wikipedia offers a skewed representation of the world that favours some groups at the expense of others so that representat...

Expand abstract

Authors: Ford, H; Graham, M; Meyer, E

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-0zayqebk7
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: authority; digital speech acts; Wikipedia; power in online communities; digital inequalities
• Subjects: Science and Technology Studies; Sociology of knowledge; internet governance; online communities; Wikipedia