WIKIPEDIA AS OBJECT OF RESEARCH, ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELDWORK AND SOURCE OF INFORMATION (?): NETNOGRAPHY OF THE MOST POPULAR ONLINE ENCYCLOPEDIA
Keywords:
Wikipedia, open encyclopedia, online ethnography, ethnographic fieldAbstract
This paper explores the ethnographic research potential of Wikipedia, an online, crowdsourced encyclopedia. The starting point is the assertion that, during Wikipedia’s crowdsourcing process, offline practices of constructing narratives of “truth” and “accuracy” often transition into the online space. Consequently, the encyclopedia emerges as a dynamic arena of communication among the texts themselves and their authors. Simultaneously, Wikipedia articles and their authors undergo corrective scrutiny and criticism from readership and other contributors, turning the encyclopedia into a location of constant changes through decentralized editing practices. Considering Wikipedia as an ongoing open communication space, the conclusion drawn here is that this encyclopedia can be regarded as a simultaneous ethnographic research object, ethnographic field, and, despite its unreliability, a source of information that, notwithstanding criticism, plays a role in the dissemination of knowledge.
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