Following the Fukushima Disaster on (and against) Wikipedia
A Methodological Note about STS Research and Online Platforms
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5337293 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Moats (0000-0001-9622-9915, TEMA, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 938-964 |
| Publication date | 2019-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0162243918815234 |
| OpenAlex | W2905227714 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 36 |
Science and technology studies is famous for questioning conceptual and material boundaries by following controversies that cut across them. However, it has recently been argued that in research involving online platforms (Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), there are also more practical boundaries to negotiate that are created by the variable availability, visibility, and structuring of data. In this paper, I highlight a potential tension between our inclination toward following controversies and "following the medium" and suggest that sometimes following controversies might involve going "against platforms" as well as with them. I will illustrate this dilemma through an analysis of the controversy over the coverage of the Fukushima disaster on English language Wikipedia, which concerns boundaries between expert and lay knowledge but also the social and technical functioning of Wikipedia itself. For this reason, I show that following the controversy might mean making use of less formatted and less obvious data than Wikipedia normally provides. While this is not an argument against the use of automated digital research tools such as scrapers, I suggest that both quantitative and qualitative researchers need to be more willing to tweak their approaches based on the specificities of the case
Data science · Dilemma · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Negotiation · Social media · Social science · Sociology · Visibility · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Open Source Software Innovations · Social Media and Politics · Wikis in Education and Collaboration
Becoming Wikipedian women
Introducing an “invisible enemy”
Sorting a public? Using quali-quantitative methods to interrogate the role of algorithms in digital democracy platforms
Who are the “Heroes of CRISPR”? Public science communication on Wikipedia and the challenge of micro-notability
Declaring crisis? Temporal constructions of climate change on Wikipedia
Uniting and reigniting critical Wikimedia research
Assembling Hyperpop
Science in action
The Culture of Connectivity
Virtual Ethnography
Digital Methods
Actor network theory and after
The Sage Handbook of Social Media
Ethnography in/of the World System
Landscaping climate change
Wikipedia
Participatory Knowledge Production 2.0
Social construction of knowledge in Wikipedia
The Dominant View of Popularization
Asymmetries of Knowledge
Pandora's hope
Diving in magma
Science on Stage
On the Consequences of Post-ANT
Why Map Issues? On Controversy Analysis as a Digital Method
In/Visibilities of Research
Multi-sited Ethnography as a Middle Range Methodology for Contemporary STS
Platform affordances and data practices
Between technical features and analytic capabilities
Three maps and three misunderstandings
Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions
Misrecognizing Tsunamis
The Platformization of the Web
A Snapshot of Social Media
After Word? - On Some Dynamics of Duality Interrogation
Technologies, Texts and Possibilities
Scraping the Social
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |