New Readers/Messaging for India

As part of the New Readers project, the Wikimedia Foundation is piloting approaches to raising Wikipedia awareness in India.

These efforts are led by community insight and direction, informing both recommended promotional channels and messaging. This page collects that community direction, summarizing the results of a survey of 321 Indian community members conducted from December 2016 through January 2017.

Challenge

Just 25% of Indians polled in a 2016 phone survey had ever heard of Wikipedia. This critically low awareness threatens the future of Wikimedia projects in the region. Without recognizing or understanding Wikipedia, internet users in India cannot make habitual use of Wikipedia, advocate for free knowledge, or participate in Wikimedia projects.

Objectives

Determine the best ways to explain Wikipedia and its use cases to new readers in India by asking people who live and work there.

Statements to reliably introduce Wikipedia
Set of clear and common Wikipedia use cases
Guidance on imagery to explain and promote Wikipedia
Recommended media formats for reaching and influencing people in target region

Summary of Findings

According to Indian community respondents, Wikipedia is a vast source of knowledge.

It is an encyclopedia and filled with knowledge
It acts like a wise, generous, know-it-all.
It is ideal for school work, free, and in Indic languages.
It looks like a library, filled with books, and it is made by society, for society.

Wikipedia should be promoted in schools and with social media posts.

TV advertisements and government partnerships are also recommended as ways to introduce and promote Wikipedia to Indians.

Detailed Findings

Introducing Wikipedia

There were 3 questions in the survey about how to explain Wikipedia. In tabulating responses, we collected all words/ideas expressed 10 or more times. These collected responses are shown in the charts below:

Explaining Wikipedia in 1 word
Word	Responses
Encyclopedia	47
Knowledge	43
Information	25
Awesome	9
Amazing	7
Library	5
Helpful	5

Several fictional characters were named as well, including Jarvis the AI from Iron Man, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, Sheldon Cooper, and Sidhu-Jetha.

If Wikipedia were a person it would be
Characteristic	Responses
Smart, A know-it-all	53
Humble, wise	18
A teacher, guide	17
Nerdy	14
Friendly, kind	11

Explaining Wikipedia in 1 sentence

There was no single consensus statement used to describe Wikipedia, but many responses featured a common structure of [Collective noun] + [knowledge object] + [dimension of scale].

Examples: "An ocean of knowledge" "Tons of information in one click" or "complete knowledge under one roof"

Using Wikipedia

There were questions in the survey about how Wikipedia use cases. In tabulating results from 302 responses, we counted every word/topic expressed more than 10 times.

Try Wikipedia it's great for
Use	Responses
Knowledge	60
Learning	41
Everyone/everything	32
Information	19
You	13

One thing for a new user to know about Wikipedia...
Thing	Responses
It's great for school, homework, exams, and learning	26
It's free	25
It's filled with facts	14
It's local Indic languages	11

Visualizing Wikipedia

99 participants shared web images or visual ideas to describe Wikipedia. Common visual elements that were repeated 5 times or more were tabulated to create the following chart:

Describing Wikipedia in imagery
Themes	Responses
Books/libraries	20
Knowledge metaphors (tree, book, site, etc)	19
Wikipedia icons	17
Cartoon	12
Schools/universities	5
World map/globe	5
Sun/Sky	5

How to promote Wikipedia

Participants could select up to 10 recommendations from a pre-developed set. The resulting vote shows preference for school promotions, social media posts, and TV ads:

Recommended approaches to promoting Wikipedia in India
Approach	Responses
School promotions	197
Social Media posts	168
TV advertisement	159
Government partnerships	148
Videos	147
Newspaper articles	132
Celebrity ambassadors	128
Posters	84
Radio announcements	64
Wiki pages	53
Other	38