It Takes a Village to Combat a Fake News Army: Wikipedia’s Community and Policies for Information Literacy

Abstract

<jats:p> The fake news crisis points to a complex set of circumstances in which new media ecologies struggle to address challenges related to authenticity, rhetorical manipulation and disinformation, and the inability of traditional educational models to adequately teach toward critical information literacy. While social media sites such as Facebook acknowledge the culpability of their platforms in spreading fake news, and create new strategies for addressing this problem, such measures are woefully inadequate. Wikipedia, nearing its 20th year, however, has developed numerous practices and policies to ensure information validity and verifiability. This article explores the connection between participation in the Wikipedia community, the development of critical information literacies, and the ability to navigate the current new media landscape. Analysis and review of Wikipedia’s community policies and the procedures resulting from these policies demonstrate the encyclopedia’s unique capacity to protect against problematic information. We ultimately argue that Wikipedia has become and remains one of the few places on the internet dedicated to combating fake news, and make recommendations on how to leverage Wikipedia practices and policies for information validation outside of the encyclopedia. </jats:p>

Wikipedia as Open Educational Practice: Experiential Learning, Critical Information Literacy, and Social Justice

“…When trying to understand Wikipedia pedagogy as OEP, it is first helpful to note that there is no set way to utilize Wikipedia as a teaching tool, and even in the numerous studies regarding Wikipedia pedagogy there is no single approach, as multiple types of assignments, subject matters, and ways to implement them are addressed. This being said, there are numerous overlaps in skills and experiences that are directly connected to the space of Wikipedia in what we have referred to previously as “experiential epistemology” (McDowell & Vetter, 2020) as learners must face specific expectations and rules that require developing certain skills to contribute to Wikipedia. With this understanding, when we discuss pedagogy and Wikipedia, we refer to the conceptual knowledges, dispositions, and skills required to make a significant contribution (such as writing an article or expanding a stub-class article).…”

“…Educators and information literacy professionals are increasingly engaging with the Wikipedia community in new ways, from asking students to contribute to and improve encyclopedic articles as classroom assignments, to holding community-organized editing marathons (or edit-a-thons) focused on improving a particular subject area in the encyclopedia (Ayers & Zanni, 2017; Catalani, 2017; Vetter & Harrington, 2013; Vetter et al, 2020; Vetter & Woods, 2018). Although previous debates around Wikipedia focused on its accuracy and reliability (while remaining a tertiary source that is not “authoritative” but instead representative of secondary sources), the conversations around Wikipedia and pedagogy have shifted, as recent and ongoing research into utilizing Wikipedia in the classroom suggests a variety of benefits from learning to write and edit (and engage deeper in general) with the world’s largest open knowledge repository (Cummings & DiLauro, 2017; McDowell & Vetter, 2020; Vetter et al, 2019). While scholars have attended to the needs and opportunities for critical, feminist, and/or social justice work provided by Wikipedia (Edwards, 2015; Gruwell, 2015; Xing & Vetter, 2020), surprisingly little research has centered on the intersections of Wikipedia as an Open Educational Resource (OER), Wikipedia’s role in teaching and enabling critical information literacy skills as Open Educational Practices (OEPs), and how Wikipedia can be engaged as enacting social justice through OEPs.…”

Fast “Truths” and Slow Knowledge; Oracular Answers and Wikipedia’s Epistemology

“…As previously articulated (McDowell and Vetter 2021;McDowell and Vetter 2020), Wikipedia provides an "experiential epistemology" -a process for engaging users in the critical evaluation of information through an assemblage of policies and guidelines agreed upon by the community. Although much of these benefits arise alongside learning how to edit and write Wikipedia, this does not necessarily require in-depth training as even the most casual audiences of the encyclopedia are likely to have encountered an invitation to help the community evaluate information, most typically in the form of a "[Citation needed]" tag, encouraging readers and would-be editors to provide a verifiable reference for unsourced or poorly sourced content.…”

Critical Digital Literacy: EFL Students’ Ability to Evaluate Online Sources

“…Literacy scholars argue that students need to develop critical online information literacies to be effective users of information in the digital age (Leeder, 2019;McDowell & Vetter, 2020). This is because most students rely on online information for nearly all aspects of their life.…”