Reducing Bias in Wikipedia’s Coverage of Political Scientists

Reducing Bias in Wikipedia’s Coverage of Political Scientists

By Samuel Baltz, University of Michigan

One in five political scientists with biographies on Wikipedia are women and almost half are American. Biases on Wikipedia can cause real harm, so I created or expanded a political science–related Wikipedia article every day for a year, focusing on writing new pages about political scientists from underrepresented groups. This article shows that Wikipedia’s coverage of political scientists remains skewed by gender and nationality, and I suggest ways for political scientists to improve Wikipedia’s representation of the discipline.