Wikipedia: global audiences, digital histories

Authors

  • Pedro Toniazzo Terres Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Departamento de História, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5581-0375
  • Lucas Tubino Piantá Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Departamento de História, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6185-0303

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2020.e68391

Abstract

This paper analyzes historical contents on the Wikipedia platform and its potential as a field of activities for historians. By approaching the platform as a global and multi-linguistic project, the article seeks to understand the relations among writing and knowledge dissemination in multiple language versions of a number of Wikipedia articles. By examining these articles with historical contents both in English and Portuguese, a survey of data on the temporal and spatial distribution of entries is carried out in the attempt to identify possible problems and biases in these contents. Finally, the article seeks to consider Wikipedia within a broader context of discussions regarding the role of historians vis-à-vis their audience and the memory disputes that permeate the social sphere. The results indicate a bias in the contents of the website’s entries on historical events and phenomena that took place in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, in both languages.

Author Biographies

Pedro Toniazzo Terres, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Departamento de História, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

Graduando de bacharelado e licenciatura em história na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Pesquisa temas relacionados a História Pública, História Digital e à Teoria e História da Historiografia. 

Lucas Tubino Piantá, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Departamento de História, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil

Graduando de bacharelado e licenciatura em história na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Pesquisa temas relacionados a História Digital e à Teoria e História da Historiografia. Autorrevisor da Wikipédia Lusófona

References

ARAUJO, Valdei. O direito à história: o(a) historiador(a) como curador(a) de uma experiência histórica socialmente distribuída. In: GUIMARÃES, Géssica; BRUNO, Leonardo; PEREZ, Rodrigo (org.). Conversas sobre o Brasil: ensaios de crítica histórica. Rio de Janeiro: Autografia, 2017. p. 191-216.

CONRAD, Sebastian. What is global history? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

HALE, Scott A. Multilinguals and Wikipedia editing. In: WEBSCI ’14: ACM WEB SCIENCE CONFERENCE, 2014. Bloomington. Proceedings Of The 2014 ACM Conference On Web Science. New York: ACM Press, 2014, p. 99-108.

HECHT, Brent; GERGLE, Darren. The tower of Babel meets web 2.0: user-generated content and its applications in a multilingual context. In: CHI 2006 CONFERENCE ON HUMAN FACTORS IN COMPUTING SYSTEMS, n° 6, 2006, Montréal. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. New York, ACM Press, 2010, p. 291-300.

JEMIELNIAK, Dariusz. Common Knowledge? An ethnography of Wikipedia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014.

KONIECZNY, Piotr; KLEIN, Maximilian. Gender gap through time and space: A journey through Wikipedia biographies via the Wikidata Human Gender Indicator. New Media & Society, Chicago, v. 20, n. 12, p. 4608-4633, 2018.

LUND, Arwid. Wikipedia, Work and Capitalism. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017.

MALERBA, Jurandir. Acadêmicos na berlinda ou como cada um escreve a história?: uma reflexão sobre o embate entre historiadores acadêmicos e não acadêmicos no Brasil à luz dos debates sobre Public History. História da Historiografia, Ouro Preto v. 7, n. 15, p. 27-50, 2014.

MARQUES, Juliana Bastos. Trabalhando com a história romana na Wikipédia: uma experiência em conhecimento colaborativo na universidade. História Hoje, São Paulo, v. 3, n. 3, p. 329-446, 2013.

MARQUES, Juliana Bastos. Representação e visibilidade do mundo antigo na Wikipédia. Revista do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, São Paulo, n. 32, p. 2-17, 21 nov. 2019.

MAYER-SCHÖNBERGER, Viktor. Geographies of the world’s knowledge: An approach. In: FLICK, Corinne Michaela. Who Owns the World’s Knowledge? Munich: Convoco, 2012. p. 112-124.

O’SULLIVAN, Dan. Wikipedia: a new community of practice? Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009.

PEREIRA, Mateus Henrique de Faria. Nova direita? Guerras de memória em tempos de comissão da verdade (2012-2014). Varia Historia, Belo Horizonte, v. 31, n. 57, p. 863-902, set./dez. 2015.

PHILLIPS, Murray G. Wikipedia and history: a worthwhile partnership in the digital era? Rethinking History, Abingdon, v. 20, n. 4, p. 523-543, 2016.

ROSENZWEIG, Roy. Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past. Journal of American History, Bloomington, v. 93, n. 1, p. 117-146, jun. 2006.

SAMOILENKO, Anna et al. Analysing timelines of national histories across Wikipedia editions: A comparative computational approach. In: ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL AAAI CONFERENCE ON WEB AND SOCIAL MEDIA, n° 11, 2017, Montréal. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Web and Social Media. Palo Alto: AAAI Press, 2017, p. 210-2019.

Downloads

Published

2020-06-19

How to Cite

Terres, P. T., & Piantá, L. T. (2020). Wikipedia: global audiences, digital histories. Esboços: Histories in Global Contexts, 27(45), 264–285. https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2020.e68391

Issue

Vol. 27 No. 45 (2020)

Section

Special Issue "Digital and global history: new horizons for the historical inquiry"

License

Esboços: histories in global contexts adopts an Open Access policy and it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Authors will be asked to sign an open access license agreement before publication.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors grant the journal Esboços: histórias em contextos globais (ISSN 2175-7976) right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0).
  2. This license allows users to remix, transform, and build upon the material, on the condition of giving acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  3. 3.Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or a personal website, or publish it as a book chapter or a translation).

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.