Bengali Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Celebration Kolkata/Submissions/Community and Communication: A Study of Wikipedia in Contrast with Social Media

Submission no.

Title of the submission

Community and Communication: A Study of Wikipedia in Contrast with Social Media

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)

Presentation

Author of the submission

Rianka Roy

E-mail address

rianka.roy@gmail.com

Username

riankaroy

Country of origin

India

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

School of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

Community and Communication: A Study of Wikipedia in Contrast with Social Media Author: Rianka Roy, Research Scholar, School of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University (rianka.roy@gmail.com) Track: Community Mode: Audio-visual presentation (Powerpoint) Duration: 30 minutes Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are often considered to be a source of information. (1) Easy and immediate communication in the network apparently facilitates dissemination of information. In this context, my paper will evaluate the need for Wikipedia as a source of information. The paper will assess some features of Wikipedia, with reference to the characteristics of conventional SNSs, and analyse in what ways Wikipedia, in spite of possessing some features similar to the ones of SNSs, is distinct from them. The paper will study how ‘Community’ is held as one of the founding principles of SNSs and of Wikipedia. In SNSs users share information through their communication; in Wikipedia, too, users contribute to the digital corpus of information and access it. Wikipedia provides users with various digital tools to upload and edit information, read and review it, and even report anomalies in the data. Just like SNSs, Wikipedia runs on individual user-based inputs, and there are predetermined formats in which information is to be shared. Just as users are “prosumers”(2) in SNSs, in Wikipedia too they fulfill the role of data producers and consumers. Besides, the site has specific privacy policies, terms and agreements for the users, as well as punitive strictures vis-à-vis violation of the norms, like regular SNSs. However, there are some features of this information-based social network that distinguish it from conventional SNSs like Facebook and LinkedIn. The most important of them perhaps is the conspicuous absence of a profit-making business model in the network.(3) The site is rather dedicated to gathering information. I will study this from the antithetical perspectives of Manuel Castells’s ‘informationalism’(4) and Daniel Schiller’s ‘digital capitalism’(5). Consequently, although users are responsible for uploading the information on Wikipedia, yet their ‘labour’ cannot be identified as the exploitative ‘digital labour’(6) that sustains the profit-mechanism of digital capitalism embodied in SNSs. In fact, Wikipedia identifies this as an “openness”(7) of the platform that enables users to be editors at the same time. My paper will discuss how popular SNSs like Facebook and Twitter hardly give any primary importance to users’ informational input. The act of communication seems to be the stipulated duty of SNS users, whereas Wikipedia emphasizes on building the content of virtual communication. The usual SNSs involve a profit-making system in which users generate and consume data, and in the process determine the popularity of a particular SNS that draws hordes of advertisers to the site. These sites accrue million dollar revenues selling their popularity to their sponsors. This impacts the structure of SNSs. The login time of users, cumulatively, determines how popular a site is and how worthwhile it is for advertisers to invest in the site. Hence, the idea of a unique user and the user profile are important features in regular SNSs. Even in order to use the communication tools of regular SNSs, users need to log into the network. Hence, each user profile can be taken as a unit of its popularity. The system is maintained by unique username-password combination of each user. The paper will argue that the absence of any such business model allows Wikipedia to function without individual account-based functioning method. Unique identities of the users are important in Wikipedia as far as the quality of data inputs is concerned; for example, users violating the norms of Wikipedia are tracked and banned from making further contributions for some time. Otherwise, to access the Wikipedia resources users do not have to log into the site with username and password. User profiles in SNSs necessarily individualize users, segregate them as if they are nodes(8) in a network; but Wikipedia users through data inputs and access function as a collective workforce and a unified audience. This reinforces the idea of community. Even the data that are pooled in remain as a unified corpus in the Wikipedia page. Its distinct process of standardization ensures this. Orthographic, etymological and conceptual variations are acknowledged with hyperlinks redirecting users to one specific page containing information on the particular topic. The pattern of information distribution in Wikipedia, therefore, is centripetal, in contrast to the abundance of information circulated in SNSs in a centrifugal form. Editorial policies of Wikipedia emphasise neutral(9) representation of facts, whereas SNSs do not involve any such streamlining procedure, barring their strictures on insensitive and hurtful remarks. This centripetal pattern sustains communities based on even various vernacular languages in Wikipedia. In the larger sphere of Wikipedia, these language-based communities face various challenges like intercommunication among the communities, community intolerance, lack of transparency in information, lack of neutrality, digital literacy and digital divide. Yet, as my paper will argue, the language-based communities in Wikipedia are far more sustainable than the electic choice of virtual communities, groups and pages, with porous borders, that are ‘created’ on popular SNSs. Overall, the idea of ‘community’, in its conventional sense of a cohesive group, seems rather tenuous in SNSs.in which apparently communication supersedes community.

Notes:

 1.David Westerman, Patric R. Spence and Brandon Van Der Heide, Social Media as Information Source: Recency of Updates and Credibility of Information, Journal of Computer-Mediated CommunicationVolume 19, Issue 2, pages 171–183, January 2014, Article first published online: 8 NOV 2013DOI: 10.1111/jcc4.12041 [Accessed at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12041/full on December 3, 2014 at 4:20 pm.]
 2.Jamie Skye Bianco, ‘Social Networking and Cloud Computing: Precarious Affordances for the “Prosumer”’, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly Vol. 37: Issues 1 & 2. pp. 303-312, p.306 (Spring/Summer 2009). [Accessed from Project Muse on April 23, 2011 at 1:27 pm.]
 3.Kamelia Angelova, ‘Why The Most Popular Online Information Source Is A Non-Profit Organization’, May 12, 2010, 3:42 PM at http://www.businessinsider.com/jimmy-wales-wikipedia-non-profit-2010-5#ixzz3KpaAmQc8 [Accessed at http://www.businessinsider.com/jimmy-wales-wikipedia-non-profit-2010-5 on December 3, 2014 at 4:22 pm]
 4.Manuel Castells, ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blureprint’, The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective, edited by Manuel Castells, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2004, p. 3.
 5.Dan Schiller, ‘Introduction: The Enchanted Network’, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System, (Cambridge, Massachusettes: MIT Press, 1999), p.1.
 6.Christian Fuchs and Sebastian Sevignani, ‘What is Digital Labour? What is Digital Work? What’s their Difference? And why do these Questions Matter for Understanding Social Media?’, tripleC: Creative Common Licence, 2013, Vol11:2, pp.237-293, p.288
 7.Wikipedia: About [Accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About on December 05, 2014 at 1:37pm at !:37 pm]
 8.Manuel Castells, ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blureprint’, The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective, edited by Manuel Castells, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2004, p. 3.
 9.Wikipedia policies [Accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Policies on December 05, 2014 at 1:33 pm].

Track

• WikiCulture & Community

Language of Track

English

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)

30 minutes

Will you attend Conference at Kolkata with own cost if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests

Interested attendees

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1. riankaroy