(Research summary by Elaine Schnabel)
Not everyone deserves their own Wikipedia page; that’s why Wikipedia’s notability guidelines exist. But definitions of notability are unevenly applied across race and gender lines: Wikipedia’s editors are less likely to consider you “notable” if you’re not a white man.
The problem extends far beyond Wikipedia. The site serves as the basis for much of the information Google and Bing display in response to searches for people. It’s part of the training data for many large language models and tools like ChatGPT. Having a Wikipedia biography signals significance in many other settings, with subtle but lasting effects on individuals’ opportunities.
Using a combination of qualitative and statistical analysis of Wikipedia pages nominated for deletion, Mackenzie Emily Lemieux and Rebecca Zhang join with Francesca Tripodi to explore how Wikipedia’s notability considerations are applied for female and BIPOC academics. They examined two key metrics used in the process of establishing notability on Wikipedia: the Search Engine Test and the “Too Soon” metric. The search engine test determines if a person’s online presence is well covered by reputable, independent sources. In their analysis, Lemieux, Zhang, and Tripodi found that this test predicts whether or not white male academics’ pages will be kept or deleted. But academics who are women and people of color are more likely to have their Wikipedia page deleted—even if they have equivalent or greater online presence than their white male peers.
The second metric, “too soon,” is a label applied to Wikipedia pages when a Wikipedian thinks there aren’t enough independent, high quality news sources about the page’s subject. Women of all races are more likely than men to be considered not yet notable (i.e., “too soon” to be on Wikipedia). The online encyclopedia’s editors were more likely to justify this label applied to women based on their career stages (e.g., “she’s an assistant professor” and therefore not yet notable). But on average, this tag gets applied to women further in their careers than men who received the tag.
Individual bias continues to disadvantage women and people of color on Wikipedia, and Wikipedians continue to allow their hidden biases to influence processes of determining notability, which hurts us all.
From Margin to Center
Missed Hakeem Jefferson’s talk today? Luckily we have video! You’re going to want to see it:
Publications and appearances
“Discourse Studies is relevant to the move beyond a narrow preoccupation with binary characterisations of content, notably the distinctions between true and false, real and fake, or bot and human.” Congratulations to Yiping Xia and Johan Farkas on the publication of “Unpacking Disinformation as Social Media Discourse” in Social Media and Society: Integrating the digital with the social in digital discourse.
“The thing about this information economy is that it makes the efficient sorting of people, not about how you can exclude them, but how efficiently you can include them while on predatory terms,” Tressie McMillan Cottom and Dominique Baker discussed hustle culture and higher education at UMass Amherst last week.
« C’est ce que montrent les études de Francesca Tripodi, professeure à l’UNC School of Information : si “KKK” ou “nazi” sont des termes bloqués ou suspectés par le moteur de recherche, des phrases slogans comme “vous ne nous remplacerez pas” sont des passages secrets vers les groupes suprémacistes. » After French television presenter Cyril Hanouna advanced a popular QAnon theory on his show, L’Express magazine explained data voids, keyword creation, and how these concepts spread online.
“People who have used social media really well in the political space tend to be people who are unscripted, who can appear as being authentic, who can communicate in a way that doesn't read like a press release,” Daniel Kreiss talked with the Daily Tar Heel about Representative Jeff Jackson’s popularity on TikTok.
“I always hope that if people take anything away, that it’s not an answer, because I’m not really good at giving one big answer. If people come looking for a single answer to a really big problem, I am probably not the person for you,” said Cottom. “I hope they leave having heard how I think of the questions that I think lead to much better answers than the questions we usually get.” Tressie McMillan Cottom talked about the crisis of higher education at Bridgewater College.
“In case you haven’t completely guessed the Republican game, their school shooting solution is women. At home. In the private sphere. And charters but mostly women at home. It’s all reproductive justice.” Slate and Jezebel both turned to Tressie McMillan Cottom to explain the right’s response to school shootings.
👏
Happy Trans Day of Visibility! May you celebrate by calling out anti-trans disinformation where you see it (because it’s everywhere right now).
Coming soon
April 5, 7:30pm: Tressie McMillan Cottom will speak with Rachelle Hampton and Karen Hawkins about digital blackface. Livestream.
April 7, 4pm: Deen Freelon will give the Melvin L. DeFleur lecture at Boston University’s Communication Research Center.
April 10, 9am: CITAP affiliate Bridget Barrett will give a public dissertation defense of her work on political merchandizing by campaigns and unofficial sellers. Held in the Freedom Forum Conference Center and available via Zoom.
April 20, 3pm: CITAP presents a talk from affiliate Melanie Feinberg about her book Everyday Adventures with Unruly Data. Live in the Freedom Forum Conference Center and livestreamed.
April 21: The School of Information and Library Science will host its annual Symposium on Information for Social Good, with keynote from Tonia Sutherland. Full agenda and registration.
April 23: Tressie McMillan Cottom will give a keynote at the Faculty Women of Color conference. Program and registration.
May 2-3: Join us at “Social Justice and Technological Futures,” hosted by the University of Tübingen. Registration is free.
May 30: Release date for Alice Marwick’s The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media.
Rest of Web
“Inspired by the success of public health, leaders in technology and policy have suggested a public health model of digital governance in which technology policy not only detects and remediates past harms of technology on society, but also supports societal well-being and prevents future crises… Yet public health, like the technology industry, has systematically failed marginalized communities in ways that are not accidents.” We’re reading Nathan Matias’s excellent round-up of the lessons the tech governance community can take from public health.