"(Weitergeleitet von Journalistin)": The Gendered Presentation of Professions on Wikipedia

Previous research has shown the existence of gender biases in the depiction of professions and occupations in search engine results. Such an unbalanced presentation might just as likely occur on Wikipedia, one of the most popular knowledge resources on the Web, since the encyclopedia has already been found to exhibit such tendencies in past studies. Under this premise, our work assesses gender bias with respect to the content of German Wikipedia articles about professions and occupations along three dimensions: used male vs. female titles (and redirects), included images of persons, and names of professionals mentioned in the articles. We further use German labor market data to assess the potential misrepresentation of a gender for each specific profession. Our findings in fact provide evidence for systematic over-representation of men on all three dimensions. For instance, for professional fields dominated by females, the respective articles on average still feature almost two times more images of men; and in the mean, 83% of the mentioned names of professionals were male and only 17% female.Comment: In the 9th International ACM Web Science Conference 2017 (WebSci'17), June 25-28, 2017, Troy, NY, USA. Based on the results of the thesis: arXiv:1702.0082

Wikipedia editing and information literacy: A case study

Purpose: This paper aims to evaluate the success of a Wikipedia editing assessment designed to improve the information literacy skills of a cohort of first-year undergraduate health sciences students. Design/methodology/approach: In this action research case study (known hereafter as “the project” to differentiate this action research from the students’ own research), students researched, wrote and published Wikipedia articles on Australia-centric health topics. Students were given a pre- and post-test to assess levels of self-confidence in finding, evaluating and referencing information. Student work was also analysed in terms of article length and quantity and the type of information sources used. Findings: Tests revealed that students’ self-confidence in their information literacy skills improved overall. Analysis of student work revealed that students wrote longer articles and incorporated more references than expected. References used were of appropriate quality relevant to the article despite minimal instructions. Originality/value: There are few studies that investigate information literacy development through Wikipedia editing in Australian universities. This study shows that Wikipedia editing is an effective way to carry out student assessment prior to essay writing and an innovative platform to improve information literacy skills in undergraduate students

Evolution of Privacy Loss in Wikipedia

The cumulative effect of collective online participation has an important and adverse impact on individual privacy. As an online system evolves over time, new digital traces of individual behavior may uncover previously hidden statistical links between an individual's past actions and her private traits. To quantify this effect, we analyze the evolution of individual privacy loss by studying the edit history of Wikipedia over 13 years, including more than 117,523 different users performing 188,805,088 edits. We trace each Wikipedia's contributor using apparently harmless features, such as the number of edits performed on predefined broad categories in a given time period (e.g. Mathematics, Culture or Nature). We show that even at this unspecific level of behavior description, it is possible to use off-the-shelf machine learning algorithms to uncover usually undisclosed personal traits, such as gender, religion or education. We provide empirical evidence that the prediction accuracy for almost all private traits consistently improves over time. Surprisingly, the prediction performance for users who stopped editing after a given time still improves. The activities performed by new users seem to have contributed more to this effect than additional activities from existing (but still active) users. Insights from this work should help users, system designers, and policy makers understand and make long-term design choices in online content creation systems

Responding to Hate: How National and Local Incidents Sparked Action at the UNLV University Libraries

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how an academic library at one of the most diverse universities in the country responded to the 2016 election through the newly formed Inclusion and Equity Committee and through student outreach. Design/methodology/approach: This paper details the context of the 2016 election and the role of social justice in librarianship. It offers ideas for how library diversity committees can address professional development, recruitment and retention efforts and cultural humility. It highlights student outreach efforts to support marginalized students, educate communities and promote student activism. Finally, it offers considerations and suggestions for librarians who want to engage in this work. Findings: This paper shows that incorporating social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion requires individuals taking action. If institutions want to focus on any of these issues, they need to formally include them in their mission, vision and values as well as in department goals and individual job descriptions. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries fully supports this work, but most of the labor is done by a small number of people. Unsustainable practices can cause employee burnout and turnover resulting in less internal and external efforts to support diversity. Originality/value: Most of the previous literature focuses either on internal activities, such as professional development and committees, or on student-focused activities, such as outreach events, displays and instruction. This paper is one comprehensive review of both kinds of activities