Writing the Revolution

Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age

Heather Ford, Ethan Zuckerman

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English

MIT Press
15 November 2022

Library & information sciences

A close reading of Wikipedia's article on the Egyptian Revolution reveals the complexity inherent in establishing the facts of events as they occur and are relayed to audiences near and far.

A close reading of Wikipedia's article on the Egyptian Revolution reveals the complexity inherent in establishing the facts of events as they occur and are relayed to audiences near and far.

Wikipedia bills itself as an encyclopedia built on neutrality, authority, and crowd-sourced consensus. Platforms like Google and digital assistants like Siri distribute Wikipedia's facts widely, further burnishing its veneer of impartiality. But as Heather Ford demonstrates in Writing the Revolution, the facts that appear on Wikipedia are often the result of protracted power struggles over how data are created and used, how history is written and by whom, and the very definition of facts in a digital age.

In Writing the Revolution, Ford looks critically at how the Wikipedia article about the 2011 Egyptian Revolution evolved over the course of a decade, both shaping and being shaped by the Revolution as it happened. When data are published in real time, they are subject to an intense battle over their meaning across multiple fronts. Ford answers key questions about how Wikipedia's so-called consensus is arrived at; who has the power to write dominant histories and which knowledges are actively rejected; how these battles play out across the chains of circulation in which data travel; and whether history is now written by algorithms.

By: Heather Ford, Ethan Zuckerman
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262046299
ISBN 10: 0262046296
Pages: 168
Publication Date: 15 November 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Foreword ix Preface xiii 1 Wikipedia Matters 1 2 Genesis 23 3 Eruption 43 4 Escalation 65 5 Surge 87 6 Translation 111 7 Toward People's Histories 131 Acknowledgments 141 Notes 145 Index 157

Heather Ford is Associate Professor and Head of Discipline for Digital and Social Media, School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney.