Janitors of Knowledge: Constructing Knowledge in the Everyday Life of Wikipedia Editors

Purpose: The aim of this article is to explore how trustworthy knowledge claims in Wikipedia are constructed by focusing on the everyday practices of Wikipedia editors. The article focuses particularly on the role of references to external sources for the stabilisation of knowledge in Wikipedia. Design/methodology/approach: The study is inspired by online ethnography. It includes eleven Wikipedia editors, together with the sociotechnical resources in Wikipedia. The material was collected through interviews, online observations, web documents and discussions, and e-mail questions. The analysis was carried out from a perspective of science and technology studies (STS). Findings: Wikipedia can be regarded as a laboratory for knowledge construction in which the already published is being recycled. The references to external sources anchor the participatory encyclopaedia in the ecology of established media and attribute trust to the knowledge published. The policy on Verifiability is analysed as an obligatory passage point to which all actors have to adjust. Active Wikipedia editors can be seen as akin to janitors of knowledge, as they are the ones who, through their hands-on activities, keep Wikipedia stable. Originality/value: The study develops an innovative understanding of the knowledge construction culture in one of the most popular sources for information on the internet. By highlighting the ways in which trust is established in Wikipedia, a more reflexive use of the participatory encyclopaedia is made possible. This is of value for information literacy training

Book review: New health information literacies

Book review of Anna-Maija Multas (2022) New health information literacies. A nexus analytical study, Acta universitatis Ouluensis B Humaniora 192, University of Oulu, Oul

Professional Digital Encyclopaedias as Socio-Technical Systems

This paper presents on-going research on the production of knowledge in contemporary professional digital encyclopaedias. By adopting a theoretical perspective that considers the interplay of humans, non-humans and practices at the same level, it develops further a socio-technical perspective on knowledge production. Methodologically, the project involves an ethnographic study staring from two editorial sites – the Swedish Nationalencyklopedin and the Norwegian Store Norske Leksikon. The empirical material consists of participatory observations, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, internal documents, as well as the two encyclopaedias appearance on the web, in social and legacy media. The preliminary results point to a co-existence of old and new orders of knowledge. Traditional taxonomies and formal expertise blend with social media, Google Analytics and new orders of work. The way encyclopaedias adjust to Google exemplifies, albeit in different ways, the fundamental role of ‘management by Google’ in contemporary networked society. It is concluded that digital encyclopaedias, Wikipedia as well as Nationalencyklopedin and Norwegian Store Norske Leksikon, constitute interesting arenas for investigating changing demands on the production of public knowledge

Invisible Search and Online Search Engines

" Invisible Search and Online Search Engines considers the use of search engines in contemporary everyday life and the challenges this poses for media and information literacy. Looking for mediated information is mostly done online and arbitrated by the various tools and devices that people carry with them on a daily basis. Because of this, search engines have a significant impact on the structure of our lives, and personal and public memories. Haider and Sundin consider what this means for society, whilst also uniting research on information retrieval with research on how people actually look for and encounter information. Search engines are now one of society’s key infrastructures for knowing and becoming informed. While their use is dispersed across myriads of social practices, where they have acquired close to naturalised positions, they are commercially and technically centralised. Arguing that search, searching, and search engines have become so widely used that we have stopped noticing them, Haider and Sundin consider what it means to be so reliant on this all-encompassing and increasingly invisible information infrastructure. Invisible Search and Online Search Engines is the first book to approach search and search engines from a perspective that combines insights from the technical expertise of information science research with a social science and humanities approach. As such, the book should be essential reading for academics, researchers, and students working on and studying information science, library and information science (LIS), media studies, journalism, digital cultures, and educational sciences.