In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Syeda ShahBano Ijaz, covers the new article by Sverrir Steinsson, George Washington University, “Rule Ambiguity, Institutional Clashes, and Population Loss: How Wikipedia Became the Last Good Place on the Internet”.
If you have ever used Wikipedia, you might have noticed that even though the online encyclopedia is an open source that anyone can edit (even you!), it is able to maintain neutrality on most issues and is even open to labeling certain issues as “false” or a “pseudoscience.” But Wikipedia was not always this reliable; in his recent APSR article, Sverrir Steinsson investigates the evolution of English-language Wikipedia to find out how understanding of neutrality by Wikipedians evolved over time, ending up with increasing reliability of Wikipedia as a source to use. Steinsson traces the change in the content of English Wikipedia over time to suggest that the combination of ambiguous institutional rules and certain editors leaving the site helped Wikipedia transition from being a source that hosted pro-fringe discourse to one that gained credibility as an active fact-checker and anti-fringe. A close examination of the content of selected Wikipedia articles, their publicly available editing history, as well as the comments made by the editors, allows Steinsson to show that a change in the interpretation of Wikipedia’s Neutral Point of View (NPOV) guideline affected the nature of content in its articles. As the interpretation favored by anti-fringe editors became popular, pro-fringe editors faced increasing challenges and began to leave Wikipedia. This shift in the balance between pro-fringe and anti-fringe editors, which was a result both of the way editorial disputes were resolved and the exit of pro-fringe editors, made Wikipedia gain credibility as a source that debunked myths and controversies and did not promote pseudoscience.
Most institutional theorists consider institutions to be stable and biased toward the status quo. Institutions persist and tend to behave in the same way over time due to continuity in decision-making and membership stability. However, comparative politics literature on norm contestation suggests that reinterpretation of ambiguous norms can lead to institutions changing from within. The ambiguity in Wikipedia’s NPOV guideline provided the same opportunity for internal change. However, for such an internal change to occur, it is important that camps with coherent views exist and that contestation between these camps leads to clear victories. This leads to power shifts within the camps and allows manifest institutional change to occur.
Steinsson selects 63 Wikipedia articles that reflect diverse topic areas (such as climate, health, gender, sexuality, and so on) with issues that have been linked to controversies that favor a pro-fringe rhetoric. He analyzes these articles for changes over time to establish the presence of an internal institutional shift. The language of each article is coded on a five-point scale, ranging from “fringe normalization” to “pro-active fringe busting.” In addition to this content analysis, Steinsson also closely studies changes in Wikipedia’s governance structure. He finds that content in English Wikipedia changed over time, from being supportive of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories to active myth-busting. Take the example of the Wikipedia page on homeopathy: from 2001-2006, the lead on the page described homeopathy as a “controversial system of alternative medicine.” From 2006-2013, the content changed to mentioning that homeopathy has been “regarded as pseudoscience” and sharing that there is a “lack of convincing scientific evidence confirming its efficacy.” By 2015, this description had stabilized to “homeopathy is a pseudoscience.”
“(…)the credibility gain of Wikipedia is an important case study that shows how internal reinterpretation of institutional norms can drive change.” Steinsson suggests that the shift in language occurred because of an internal change in how Wikipedia editors interpreted the NPOV guidelines. From an early understanding of the NPOV rule as entailing diverse points of views and staying away from pejorative labels, the later understanding moved towards only documenting facts (as opposed to points of view) and the acceptance to apply pejorative labels as needed. Accompanying this change in understanding was an editorial powershift; Steinsson documents the editorial debates over time to show that anti-fringe editors gained ground while pro-fringe editors began to exit Wikipedia. As a result of this attrition, the institutional brand of English Wikipedia moved from being a suspect source to a credible one.
These changes in Wikipedia’s content have been gradual as opposed to sudden. Therefore, it is unlikely that they were prompted by external events like the election of Donald Trump in 2016. These shifts are also unlikely to reflect external shifts in the sources Wikipedia drew from since it was the analysis of the sources within Wikipedia articles that changed. Further, many of the sources the articles would cite as reliable were deemed unreliable over time. Instead, the credibility gain of Wikipedia is an important case study that shows how internal reinterpretation of institutional norms can drive change. This casts doubt on the stability of institutions, particularly those that encourage public engagement through social media and the internet.
- Syeda ShahBano Ijaz is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at UC San Diego. Her research focuses on the political economy of foreign aid in developing countries. In her dissertation, ShahBano explores the role of last-mile access to foreign aid in inducing local-level accountability in Pakistan.
- Article details: STEINSSON, SVERRIR. 2023. “Rule Ambiguity, Institutional Clashes, and Population Loss: How Wikipedia Became the Last Good Place on the Internet.”, American Political Science Review
- About the APSA Public Scholarship Program.