0000000000684597
AUTHOR
Ulrike Cress
The Norm of Neutrality in Collaborative Knowledge Construction
Social media enabled collaboration at unprecedented levels. And while research points to the benefits of mass collaboration, it has also revealed challenges and problems. Here we explore biases in collaboratively constructed knowledge. To this end, we compared two online encyclopedias: Wikipedia and the extreme right-wing Metapedia. Both urge users to present topics from a neutral point of view. Using different measures we found that Metapedia articles (vs. Wikipedia articles) are significantly shorter, contain fewer references, contain relatively more anger- and anxiety-related words, rarely present more than one point of view in controversies, and often convey opinions – for inctance, by …
Emotions in Wikipedia: the role of intended negative events in the expression of sadness and anger in online peer production
ABSTRACTThe online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has strict guidelines for ensuring the objectivity of its content and unbiased language of its articles. Wikipedia also provides articles on negative even...
Emotional Content in Wikipedia Articles on Negative Man-Made and Nature-Made Events
Wikipedia emphasizes the objectivity of content. Yet, Wikipedia articles also deal with negative events that potentially elicit intense emotions. Undesirable outcomes (e.g., earthquakes) are known to elicit sadness, while undesirable outcomes caused by others’ actions (e.g., terrorist attacks) are known to elicit anger. Internet users’ emotional responses are likely to end up in Wikipedia articles on those events as characteristics of Internet users spill over to Wikipedia articles. Therefore, we expected that Wikipedia articles on terrorist attacks contain more anger-related and less sadness-related content than articles on earthquakes. We analyzed newly created Wikipedia articles about t…
Cultural Interpretations of Global Information? Hindsight Bias after Reading Wikipedia Articles across Cultures
Summary: Hindsight bias is the mistaken belief that an outcome could have been foreseen once it is known. But what happens after learning about an event? Can reading biased media amplify hindsight distortions? And do people from different cultural backgrounds — with different cognitive thinking styles — draw equal conclusions from equal media reports? We report two studies with Wikipedia articles and samples from different cultures (Study 1: Germany, Singapore, USA, Vietnam, Japan, Sweden, N = 446; Study 2: USA, Vietnam, N = 144). Participants read one of two article versions (foresight and hindsight) about the Fukushima Nuclear Plant and estimated the likelihood, inevitability, and foresee…