Producing and Debating History : Historical Knowledge on Wikipedia / Petros Apostolopoulos.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Apostolopoulos, Petros.

Contributor:

Université de Luxembourg, Funder.

Series:

Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics Series

Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics Series ; v.10

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Web sites.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (244 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Basel/Berlin/Boston : Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2024.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

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

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

Diss. North Carolina State Univ. 2022.

ISBN:

9783111069586

3111069583

OCLC:

1463056290