We test the hypothesis that the extent to which one obtains information on a
given topic through Wikipedia depends on the language in which it is consulted.
Controlling the size factor, we investigate this hypothesis for a number of 25
subject areas. Since Wikipedia is a central part of the web-based information
landscape, this indicates a language-related, linguistic bias. The article
therefore deals with the question of whether Wikipedia exhibits this kind of
linguistic relativity or not. From the perspective of educational science, the
article develops a computational model of the information landscape from which
multiple texts are drawn as typical input of web-based reading. For this
purpose, it develops a hybrid model of intra- and intertextual similarity of
different parts of the information landscape and tests this model on the
example of 35 languages and corresponding Wikipedias. In this way the article
builds a bridge between reading research, educational science, Wikipedia
research and computational linguistics.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figures, 5 table
