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Article
Publication date: 30 April 2021

Marcin Roszkowski and Bartłomiej Włodarczyk

The paper aims to present the development of conceptualization of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) based on associations with other articles on English edition of Wikipedia…

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to present the development of conceptualization of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) based on associations with other articles on English edition of Wikipedia. The main goal of the paper is to study the social organization of knowledge about COVID-19 within the Wikipedia community of practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodological approach taken in this study was based on the application of Moscovici's theory of social representations to Wikipedia's knowledge organization system (KOS). Internal links in the Wikipedia article about COVID-19 were considered anchors in its social representations. Each link in the introductory part of the article was considered an indicator of the semantic relationship between COVID-19 and other concepts from Wikipedia's knowledge base. The subject of this study was links extracted from all revisions of the COVID-19 article between February and September 2020. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on these conceptual structures using both synchronic and diachronic approaches.

Findings

It was found that the evolution of anchors in the Wikipedia article on COVID-19 was in line with the mechanism of symbolic coping related to infectious disease. It went through stages of divergence, convergence and normalization. It shows that this mechanism governs the social organization of knowledge related to COVID-19 on Wikipedia.

Originality/value

No studies have been devoted to the image of COVID-19 as presented by the evolution of links in Wikipedia and its implications for knowledge organization (KO).

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 78 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 June 2009

Johannes Moskaliuk and Joachim Kimmerle

The purpose of this paper is to aim to identify principles that make wikis an effective application when they are used within an organization. Those principles are supposed to…

1141

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to aim to identify principles that make wikis an effective application when they are used within an organization. Those principles are supposed to make wikis a successful instrument for organizational learning.

Design/methodology/approach

The article makes a distinction between functional and psycho‐social principles and emphasizes their impact on organizational learning.

Findings

The functional principles (quick and easy editing; wikilinks; no hierarchical hypertext structure; revision and topicality; collaborative product; scalability and flexibility) may be regarded as the constitutive attributes of wikis. The psycho‐social principles (openness; self‐organization; autonomy; interest and personal relevance; diversity; serendipity effect) are not directly associated with wikis as a tool, but refer to the application context.

Originality/value

The article explains the functional and psycho‐social principles in detail. This will help organizations and knowledge‐management executives to employ wikis in an efficient way and avoid their disadvantages. Thus, the functional and psycho‐social principles can be a valuable starting point for applying wikis successfully in various organizational scenarios.

Details

Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, vol. 23 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7282

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 24 October 2022

Danielle A. Morris-O'Connor, Andreas Strotmann and Dangzhi Zhao

To add new empirical knowledge to debates about social practices of peer production communities, and to conversations about bias and its implications for democracy. To help…

Abstract

Purpose

To add new empirical knowledge to debates about social practices of peer production communities, and to conversations about bias and its implications for democracy. To help identify Wikipedia (WP) articles that are affected by systematic bias and hopefully help alleviate the impact of such bias on the general public, thus helping enhance both traditional (e.g. libraries) and online information services (e.g. Google) in ways that contribute to democracy. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objectives.

Design/methodology/approach

Quantitatively, the authors identify edit-warring camps across many conflict zones of the English language WP, and profile and compare success rates and typologies of camp edits in the corresponding topic areas. Qualitatively, the authors analyze the edit war between two senior WP editors that resulted in imbalanced and biased articles throughout a topic area for such editorial characteristics through a close critical reading.

Findings

Through a large-scale quantitative study, the authors find that winner-take-all camps exhibit biasing editing behaviors to a much larger extent than the camps they successfully edit-war against, confirming findings of prior small-scale qualitative studies. The authors also confirm the employment of these behaviors and identify other behaviors in the successful silencing of traditional medicinal knowledge on WP by a scientism-biased senior WP editor through close reading.

Social implications

WP sadly does, as previously claimed, appear to be a platform that represents the biased viewpoints of its most stridently opinionated Western white male editors, and routinely misrepresents scholarly work and scientific consensus, the authors find. WP is therefore in dire need of scholarly oversight and decolonization.

Originality/value

The authors independently verify findings from prior personal accounts of highly power-imbalanced fights of scholars against senior editors on WP through a third-party close reading of a much more power balanced edit war between senior WP editors. The authors confirm that these findings generalize well to edit wars across WP, through a large scale quantitative analysis of unbalanced edit wars across a wide range of zones of contention on WP.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 79 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 November 2012

Quoc‐Hung Ngo, Son Doan and Werner Winiwarter

This paper aims to serves two main purposes: First, it seeks to provide an overview of the location hierarchy from the highest divisions (continents) to the lowest divisions…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to serves two main purposes: First, it seeks to provide an overview of the location hierarchy from the highest divisions (continents) to the lowest divisions (wards, villages) in reality and in the Wikipedia pages. Secondly, it aims to introduce an approach to building a geographical ontology from Wikipedia.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper first reviews existing applications which extract information from Wikipedia and use it as a data resource to develop natural language processing tools. The paper also reviews the structure of Wikipedia pages which show the location's information. Based on the analysis, the paper then proposes an approach to extract location hierarchy as well as geographical characteristics for the geo‐ontology. The approach also rebuilds the relations between locations in the ontology.

Findings

Existing location name systems are mainly based on probabilistic locations, which are mined from the data and they lack the administrative relations between locations for full levels and all countries and territories. The literature review in geographical hierarchy and using Wikipedia for natural language processing tasks offers an approach to build a geographical ontology from Wikipedia pages. The proposed approach is believed to be the first which provides a full geo‐ontology for all countries.

Practical implications

The paper builds a geo‐ontology with full levels for all countries and territories. The administrative relations between locations are needed for real‐world applications.

Originality/value

The comprehensive overview on existing work on geo‐ontology provides a valuable reference for researchers and system developers in related research communities. The proposed approach to build a geographical ontology by using the Wikipedia offers a promising alternative to build a knowledge system from free online multi‐language encyclopedia.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 8 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 May 2018

Ramakrishnan Raman and Preetha Menon

The purpose of this study is to understand the strategy adopted by family firms in using social media for their business. Based on the social media usage, this paper attempts to…

1027

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to understand the strategy adopted by family firms in using social media for their business. Based on the social media usage, this paper attempts to segment family firms. To do so, a reactive – proactive – innovative (RPI) scale was developed for the study. Then, the family firms were categorised as reactive, proactive or innovative social media users. Further, based on the scale developed, clusters were created. Family firms were placed into different clusters based on the strategy that they had for using social media platforms for their business.

Design/methodology/approach

A pilot sample of 50 family firms and a main study of 256 Indian family firm entrepreneurs were surveyed through self-administered questionnaires. Factor analysis reduced the 12 scale-based questions to three distinct factors. Confirmatory factor analysis was then conducted on the main sample to confirm the constructs identified using exploratory factor analysis. Cluster analysis was used to build clusters of entrepreneurs who use social media as part of their digital marketing strategy.

Findings

Findings reveal that the Indian family firm market is largely divided into four main segments. These segments represent distinct behaviours with respect to the use of social media. The four segments of family firm entrepreneurs were named as high rollers, ignorant inhabitants, trend-setters, combative crowd based on their social media usage behaviour. These clusters give deep insights into the strategic usage of social media by family firms.

Research limitations/implications

The limitation of this study is that entrepreneurs from all Indian states were not considered in the sample because of cost implications. This research study has only created the segmentation of the family firms as reactive, proactive or innovative social media users and also has created the clusters as high rollers, ignorant inhabitants, trend-setters and combative crowd. Also, the reasons for their behaviour and root cause for the strategic usage have not been studied.

Practical implications

This study reflects on current practices of family firms with respect to usage of social media and groups them into large identifiable clusters. Equipped with the findings from this study, the RPI scale developed for the study and the clusters created, entrepreneurs can now move towards better use of social media for innovation.

Originality/value

Although past studies have advocated the use of social media to spur innovation in firms, this study segments the current market based on their practices. It allows readers to gauge the proportion of family firms using social media for innovation and paves the way for a change in behaviour amongst these firms.

Details

International Journal of Innovation Science, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-2223

Keywords

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