ABSTRACT
Although Wikipedia has increasingly attracted attention for its in-depth and timely coverage of breaking news stories, the social dynamics of how Wikipedia editors process breaking news items has not been systematically examined. Through a 3-month study of 161 deliberations over whether a news item should appear on Wikipedia's front page, we demonstrate that elite users fulfill a unique gatekeeping role that permits them to leverage their community position to block the promotion of inappropriate items. However, these elite users are unable to promote their supported news items more effectively than other types of editors. These findings suggest that "one-sided gatekeeping" may reflect a crucial stasis in social media where the community has to balance the experience of its elite users while encouraging contributions from non-elite users.
- Arguello, J., Butler, B., Joyce, E., Kraut, R., Ling, K., Rosé, C. and Wang, X. (2006). Talk to me: Foundations for successful individual-group interactions in online communities. In Proc. of CHI 2006, 959--968. NY: ACM Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Barzilai-Nahon, K. (2008). Toward a theory of network gatekeeping: A framework for exploring information control. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(9), 1493--1512. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Boczkowski, P. (2004). Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Butler, B., Joyce, E. and Pike, J. (2008). Don't look now, but we've created a bureaucracy: The nature and roles of policies and rules in Wikipedia. In Proc. of CHI 2008, 1101--1110. NY: ACM Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dee, J. (2007). All the News That's Fit to Print Out. The New York Times, July 1, 2007.Google Scholar
- Deuze, M. (2006). Participation, Remediation, Bricolage: Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture. The Information Society, 22(2), 63--75.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Dunkel, T. (2008). Word War III. The Washington Post, August 10, 2008, W16.Google Scholar
- Kelly, J.W., Fisher, D. and Smith, M. (2006). Friends, foes, and fringe: norms and structure in political discussion networks. In Proc. 2006 Int'l. Conf. on Digital Government Research, 412--417. NY: ACM Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kittur, A., Suh, B., Pendleton, B., Chi, E. (2007) He Says, She Says: Conflict and Coordination in Wikipedia. In Proc. of CHI 2007, 453--462. NY: ACM Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lampe, C. and Resnick, P. (2004). Slash(dot) and burn: Distributed moderation in a large online conversation space. In Proc. of CHI 2004, 543--550. NY: ACM Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lih, A. (2009). Community at Work. The Wikipedia Revolution, 81--122. NY: Hyperion.Google Scholar
- Lowrey, W. and Anderson, W. (2005). The journalist behind the curtain: Participatory functions on the Internet and their impact on perceptions of the work of journalism. J. Computer-Mediated Comm., 10(3).Google Scholar
- Viégas, F.B., Wattenberg, M., Kriss, J. and van Ham, F. (2007). Talk before you type: Coordination in Wikipedia. In Proc. of HICSS 2007, 78--87. Washington, D.C.: IEEE Press. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Williams, B., Carpini, D. and Michael, X. (2000). Unchained reaction: The collapse of media gatekeeping and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Journalism, 1(1), 61--85.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- Egalitarians at the gate: one-sided gatekeeping practices in social media
Recommendations
Wikipedia's “Neutral Point of View”: Settling Conflict through Ambiguity
This article discusses how one of the most important Wikipedia policies, the “neutral point of view” (NPOV), is appropriated and interpreted by the participants in the Wikipedia project. By analyzing a set of constitutive documents for the Wikipedian ...
Socs: increasing social and group awareness for Wikis by example of Wikipedia
WikiSym '08: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on WikisMany wikis provide good workspace awareness. Users see quickly what changes have been made or get notified about modifications on selected pages. However, they do not support a more sophisticated social or group awareness.
Being aware of social ...
Social capital increases efficiency of collaboration among Wikipedia editors
HT '11: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermediaIn this study we measure the impact of pre-existing social capital on the efficiency of collaboration among Wikipedia editors. To construct a social network among Wikipedians we look to mutual interaction on the user talk pages of Wikipedia editors. As ...
Comments