World Heritage sites on Wikipedia
Cultural heritage activism in a context of constrained agency
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5260907 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ben Marwick (0000-0001-7879-4531, University of Washington, corresponding author), Prema Smith (0000-0002-5485-359X, University of Washington) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Big Data & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2053-9517 • E-ISSN: 2053-9517 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/20539517211017304 |
| OpenAlex | W3165866431 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 51 |
UNESCO World Heritage sites are places of outstanding significance and often key sources of information that influence how people interact with the past today. The process of inscription on the UNESCO list is complicated and intersects with political and commercial controversies. But how well are these controversies known to the public? Wikipedia pages on these sites offer a unique dataset for insights into public understanding of heritage controversies. The unique technicity of Wikipedia, with its bot ecosystem and editing mechanics, shapes how knowledge about cultural heritage is constructed and how controversies are negotiated and communicated. In this article, we investigate the patterns of production, consumption, and spatial and temporal distributions of Wikipedia pages for World Heritage cultural sites. We find that Wikipedia provides a distinctive context for investigating how people experience and relate to the past in the present. The agency of participants is highly constrained, but distinctive, behind-the-scenes expressions of cultural heritage activism are evident. Concerns about state-like actors, violence and destruction, deal-making, etc. in the World Heritage inscription process are present, but rare on Wikipedia's World Heritage pages. Instead, hyper-local and process issues dominate controversies on Wikipedia. We describe how this kind of research, drawing on Big Data and data science methods, contributes to digital heritage studies and also reveals its limitations
Archaeology · Citizen science · Cultural heritage · Cultural heritage management · Industrial heritage · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · History · Law · Wikis in Education and Collaboration
Uses of Heritage
Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media
The Pipeline of Online Participation Inequalities
Laboratories of Oligarchy? How the Iron Law Extends to Peer Production
Beyond “Natural” and “Cultural” Heritage
The Anglosphere
Friction
Cambodia's Border Conflict with Thailand
At the crossroads with public history
Wisdom of the crowd or technicity of content? Wikipedia as a sociotechnical system
Computational Reproducibility in Archaeological Research
Anyone can edit’, not everyone does
The rush to inscribe
Uneven Geographies of User-Generated Information
Heritage Populism” and France’s National Front
Heritage Pasts and Heritage Presents
Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget
Digital heritage research re-theorised
Big Data and the brave new world of social media research
Platform affordances and data practices
Wikipedia, sociology, and the promise and pitfalls of Big Data
Gridlock
Paradise Lost
The heritage of Brexit
Shifting tides of world-making in the Unesco World Heritage Convention
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,8 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |