Gender differences within the German - language Wikipedia
Journal Title: ESSACHESS - Journal for Communication Studies - Year 2014, Vol 7, Issue 2
Abstract
The Wikipedia project constitutes the currently most-used and most comprehensive online encyclopedia in the world (Schneider, 2008, p. 35) and is advertising itself as free and open for everyone, and in terms of an encyclopedia as diverse and balanced at all levels. But from a gender perspective there is a huge discrepancy in sex ratio within Wikipedia’s community. In 2005, researchers at University of Würzburg found that women constitute only 10 % of German-language Wikipedia authors (Schroer&Hertel, 2009, p. 104). This fact leads to the presumption, that Wikipedia’s reflection of the world mediates and interprets a mainly male conception of the world and thus displays an inequality with reference to modern society. Proceeding from the assumption that women and men have different communication behaviours as well as different perceptions and interpretations of communication in almost all aspects of social interaction including e.g. conversational strategies, conflict management and negotiation skills, we hypothesize that these different ways of communication significantly affect the motivation of female Wikipedia contributors.
Authors and Affiliations
Lecturer Almut SICHLER| University of Rostock GERMANY, Professor Elizabeth PROMMER| University of Rostock GERMANY
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP9168
- DOI -
- Views 414
- Downloads 23
The preservation of digital heritage: epistemological and legal reflections
Different disciplines and fields of study seem to be heralding the rise of an interdisciplinary scientific and intellectual movement focused on digital heritage, operationally defined as the ensemble of documents and i...
Innovation in Researching the Effects of Frame – Focused Instruction on Second Language Acquisition
In the context of globalization the research of innovative teaching methods and techniques becomes relevant. The traditional teaching approach where the training of practice material is preceded by rule-presentation...
The Bigourdane technical ceramic nomad and sedentary between heritage and transactional areas
This chapter introduces the technical ceramic sector in the Hautes Pyrenees county. It aims at presenting the dynamics of recomposition of an industry historically linked to the presence of a local resource: electr...
Symbolic severance. Charlie or the broken circle of cultural mediation
The cultural dimension of the attack on Charlie Hebdo raises questions about the meaning of the event in terms of public policies on art and culture. At issue particulary is the re-situation of those policies in their...
Romania in 10 days. Sensational stories – the profile of a TV channel
This article presents the profile of the most famous private TV channel in Romania, PROTV, in a comparative analysis with the public national television, TVR. The analysis (a corpus of 7 p.m. “PROTV Newsâ€, from...