Cultural bias in Wikipedia content on famous persons

Authors:
Ewa S. Callahan;Susan C. Herring
Affiliations:
Department of Film, Video, and Interactive Media, School of Communications, Quinnipiac University, 275 Mt. Carmel Avenue, Hamden, CT 06518-1908;School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1320 E. 10th St., Bloomington, IN 47405-3907
Venue:
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Year:
2011

Citing 0
Cited 4

Omnipedia: bridging the wikipedia language gap

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Generating possible interpretations for statistics from linked open data

ESWC'12 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on The Semantic Web: research and applications
In search of the ur-Wikipedia: universality, similarity, and translation in the Wikipedia inter-language link network

Proceedings of the Eighth Annual International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration
Manypedia: comparing language points of view of Wikipedia communities

Proceedings of the Eighth Annual International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Wikipedia advocates a strict “neutral point of view” (NPOV) policy. However, although originally a U.S-based, English-language phenomenon, the online, user-created encyclopedia now has versions in many languages. This study examines the extent to which content and perspectives vary across cultures by comparing articles about famous persons in the Polish and English editions of Wikipedia. The results of quantitative and qualitative content analyses reveal systematic differences related to the different cultures, histories, and values of Poland and the United States; at the same time, a U.S./English-language advantage is evident throughout. In conclusion, the implications of these findings for the quality and objectivity of Wikipedia as a global repository of knowledge are discussed, and recommendations are advanced for Wikipedia end users and content developers. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.