Producing and debating history : historical knowledge on Wikipedia / Petros Apostolopoulos
Material type: TextSeries: Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics ; 10Publisher: Boston : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2024Edition: 1stDescription: 1 online resourceContent type:- text
- computer
- online
- 9783111069234
- AE100
Item type | Current library | Call number | URL | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Online Resource | UAE Federation Library | مكتبة اتحاد الإمارات Online Copy | نسخة إلكترونية | Link to resource | Not for loan |
Introduction .-- Chapter 1 . Framing the Production of Historical knowledge on Wikipedia: Policies, Guidelines, Rules, Hierarchy, and History .-- Chapter 2. Reconstructing the Distant Past on Wikipedia: The Great Depression and the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki .-- Chapter 3 . Reconstructing the Recent Past on Wikipedia: The Vietnam War and September 11 attacks .-- Chapter 4. A Network Analysis of Wikipedia Editors’ Engagement with History: Interests, Identities, Power, and Hierarchy .-- Chapter 5. Writing History on Wikipedia: Insights from Wikipedia Editors .-- Conclusion .-- References.-- Index.
In 2021, the American Historical Association published a study on how the American public perceives and understands the past. Almost half of the respondents argued that they turn to Wikipedia to learn about history and acquire a historical understanding of the past. Wikipedia was ranked higher than other historical activities, such as “Historic site visit,” “Museum visit,” “Genealogy work,” “Social media,” “Podcast/radio program,” “History lecture,” and “History-related video game.” These findings combined with the appropriation of Wikipedia’s corpus by ChatGPT and Wikipedia’s partnership with the most central search engine in the digital world, Google, and other digital assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, make clear how crucial the role of Wikipedia in how the public learns about history and makes sense of the past is.
But how is historical knowledge produced on Wikipedia? How do Wikipedia editors engage with historical events of the past and transform the past into historical knowledge? Why do they decide to contribute to the production of history? By placing Wikipedia editors at the center of research inquiry and using multiple methodologies and different kinds of data, this book explores how historical knowledge is produced in one of the most central digital communities of knowledge, Wikipedia.