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New Readers/Awareness

< New Readers
New Readers
Research and findings
  Outcome #1: Access
  Outcome #2: Awareness
  Outcome #3: Discovery
  Outcome #4: Retention
  Outcome #5: Syndication
Updates
FAQ and all pages

During our 2016 research, we learned that many people in Nigeria, India, and Mexico are unaware that Wikipedia exists, let alone what it is or how to use it. This lack of recognition and understanding threatens the Wikimedia movement's ability to deliver on our vision statement and invite new participants from these countries. As a result, we are eager to explore:

  1. Better ways of explaining Wikipedia, including clear use cases
  2. Media formats that help us promote Wikipedia (including possible video, radio, and social media messaging)
  3. Partnerships that help us expand the visibility and trust of Wikipedia
  4. Coordinated press, social posts, product, and partnership efforts to increase Wikipedia awareness 

What we're doing

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Campaign extension

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Video campaigns produced and distributed in Iraq, Nigeria, and Madhya Pradesh, India were successful in increasing awareness of Wikipedia. The campaign in Mexico did not have an impact, but we believe that this is due to a more mature media market and too-limited distribution. We are now extending the campaigns using the existing videos to reach a wider audience.

Campaign extension targets & detail
Region Target (views) Description
Iraq TBD It has been more than 2 years since we published our Iraqi ad in conjunction with Asiacell. Now we would like to republish the video WITHOUT the Asiacell + Wikipedia Zero cobrand and develop our benchmark in the region for future spends.
India 12M The original campaign was targeted at a single state in India. We’d will distribute the video to all Hindi speakers in India.
Mexico 12M The campaign was promoted in Mexico only, and we’d like to promote to select countries in Spanish-speaking LATAM.
Nigeria 3M This campaign was wildly successful and went viral, and therefore may have reached most of the addressable audience. We hope to “rekindle” viral sharing by making a small investment to republish and repopularize the video in Nigeria and other countries.


Completed projects

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Mobile web

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Updated header for the mobile web

We launched a new header for the mobile web that shows the project's brand more visibly. This has rolled out on the larger wikis, and work for other projects and scripts is ongoing through the end of our fiscal year (ending June 30, 2017).

We believe that the impact of this work will have a long reach, and be difficult to measure. What we expect is that the people visiting Wikipedia from Google will develop awareness of the Wikipedia name through repeated visits. We will evaluate what we can in a phone survey in Iraq in the coming months and will share that back here.

Communications: Campaign to raise awareness in Iraq

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The Wikimedia Foundation worked with Wikimedians in Iraq to increase awareness of Wikipedia. Our goals were to improve recognition of Wikipedia and understanding of its uses among Iraqi internet users. With our Wikipedia Zero partnership with Asiacell in Iraq, we had an opportunity to reach millions of Iraqis and introduce them to Wikipedia.

Final report

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Raising Awareness in Iraq -- Impact Report

Key data points

  1. 5.1 Million video views on video ad
  2. 36,000+ positive reactions to videos vs. less than 30 negative responses on social media
  3. Measurable increase to Arabic Wikipedia during campaign period (high traffic spikes during SMS blast details) (Slide 8 of Report)
  4. 32% rise in Wikipedia awareness among Iraqi internet users (55% rise among Asiacell users)

Communications: Campaign to raise awareness in Nigeria

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New Readers User persona - Chris - Nigeria

We worked with Wikimedia Nigeria to increase awareness of Wikipedia. The videos were released in October 2017, receiving over 10 million combined views. See the videos below!

  • Emmanuella goes to school
  • Things come together

To see our project overview click here.

Key audiences

  • Students across Nigeria (see New Readers user persona "Chris")
  • Internet users in Nigeria

Key performance indicators

  • Positive change in “Have heard of Wikipedia” annual phone surveying of Nigeria (from benchmark 22% “have heard of Wikipedia” in 2016)
  • Increased unique devices accessing Wikipedia content in Nigeria

Communications: Campaign to raise awareness in India

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New Readers User persona - Kumari - India

We are collaborating with community groups across India to increase awareness of Wikipedia. The video was released in the spring of 2018. Zack McCune has been leading this project with support by Ravi Ayyakkannu and Satdeep Gill.

  • Ektara ad (with English subtitles)
  • Ektara ad

To see our project overview click here.

Key audiences

  • Students across India (see New Readers user persona "Kumari")
  • Internet users in India (with focus on Hindi language)

Key performance indicators

  • Positive change in “Have heard of Wikipedia” annual phone surveying of Nigeria (from benchmark 25% “have heard of Wikipedia” in 2016)
  • Increased unique devices accessing Wikipedia content in India within focus languages


Community: Inspire New Readers Campaign

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In January 2018 there was a month-long Inspire Campaign to gather and develop ideas for how to raise awareness of Wikipedia in different parts of the world. The campaign exceeded its targets, with 424 ideas created and edited by 607 participants around the world!

During the Inspire campaign, we hosted a workshop series to support understanding and development of ideas. Learn more by watching the following videos.

  • What is the New Readers program ?
  • How would Wikipedia be valuable to New Readers ?
  • What content is important where you live ?
  • Where do people look for information ?
  • What kind of social media content is most popular ?
  • User personas and how they can help design your project ?
 
Inspire New Readers Campaign - Impact Report


We are working with community members to convert their ideas into projects through Rapid Grants and otherwise. The application deadline for these grants is March 15.

We funded 8 different projects; 3 in India, 3 in Nigeria, 1 in Nepal and 1 in Democratic Republic of Congo.

Community Marketing Experiments

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Satdeep Gill is leading 2 experiments promoting Wikimedia projects through social media marketing. These are designed to drive traffic to the sites, teach communities how to work with social media marketing, and build a toolkit to support future campaigns by communities. We'll include those materials with the upcoming rapid grants for awareness.


Communications: Campaign to raise awareness in Mexico

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We worked with Wikimedia Mexico to increase awareness of Wikipedia through a digital video campaign. The video production is complete and the campaign is concluded.

See the Superdotada video below!

To see our project overview and impact report click here.

Background

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The New Readers team's work is grounded in research and experimentation. We started with deep research in 2016, which brought 24 findings. We're acting on three of those. The following summarizes what we've learned and how we're thinking about raising awareness.

Findings

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As a brand, Wikipedia is not widely recognized or understood. Some people are Wikipedia readers without realizing it. (Finding 21)

There is limited understanding of what Wikipedia is or how it works. Lack of understanding occurs at a few levels:

  • Brand: Few respondents recognized the Wikipedia visual brand (the name was more widely known), or could accurately describe what Wikipedia was.
  • Mission: Other than expert respondents, virtually no one seemed aware of Wikipedia’s mission or that the larger Wikimedia movement.
  • Content: Only a few respondents understood how content creation and editing worked. Most either had never considered the topic, or thought that editing was done by those paid or otherwise assigned to do so (e.g. Wikipedia staff or foreign students working on assignments).

Many casual Wikipedia readers had no knowledge that they had ever used the platform. As Wikipedia articles often feature in first-page search results, many people have used it without realizing it. Students are the exception to the above. Even students with limited to moderate internet access generally knew what Wikipedia was and how it could be useful for them.

People confuse Wikipedia with a search engine or social media platform. This can create unrealistic expectations of its functionality. (Finding 22)

As the most widely known internet brands (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) are social media platforms or search engines (e.g. Google), many other international internet brands are also lumped in these two categories. Mislabeled brands include Skype, YouTube, and Wikipedia. At times, this can lead to unrealistic expectations around Wikipedia’s features—for example, those that think it is a search engine believe it should have more robust search functionality. False expectations, in turn, lead to poor assessments of Wikipedia’s design or performance.

Personas

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Personas are used in product development to ground ideas and implementation in real goals, desires, and limitations that we saw from interviews in the field research conducted in early 2016. We'll be using these personas to drive our strategies from design, messaging, and partnerships. We will be using the following personas:

  •  
    Chris (Reader, Nigeria)
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    Kumari (Reader, India)
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    Wayne (Wikipedia Admin, USA)

Messaging consultations

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Presentation summary of Wikimedia Nigeria community feedback on how to best explain and promote Wikipedia in Nigeria.

From December 2016 to January 2017, we shared a 10-question survey to contributors and local Wikipedia fans in India and Nigeria asking for guidance and advice. This page documents those consultations including the outcomes, questions asked, policy statement used, and findings collected. See the full data set from the survey in Nigeria here or the wrap up slide deck embedded here.

Workshop sessions

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Phone surveys

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We surveyed existing and potential readers to complement the design research work being conducted in these countries. The design research portion of this work consisted of personal, on-site interviews to gain a deeper understanding of their habits and limitations, while this work took a broader view on a larger population in the country.

Awareness per country

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Country code Country name % of people who report having heard of Wikipedia (internet and non internet users) % of internet users who report having heard of Wikipedia % of internet users who report having heard of Wikipedia post-campaign
NG Nigeria 23% 27% 48%
IN India 22% 33% 40%
MX Mexico 45% 51% 51%
BR Brazil 30% 39%
EG Egypt 17%
IQ Iraq 11% 19%
FR France 84%
DE Germany 86%
JP Japan 64%
RU Russia 87%
SP Spain 91%
UK United Kingdom 83%
US United States 87%

Data source for NR, IN, MX, BR, EQ, IQ: Global Reach/Insights, 2016-17

Data source for remaining countries: Movement Strategy research, 2017

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