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<\/p>\nIn the afternoon of\u00a0June 16, we hold\u00a0the Biotope Salon with the speaker Mr. Omri Reis, PhD candidate of the University of Tokyo.\u00a0His speech was the outline of his doctoral dissertation. Here is the abstract.<\/p>\n
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Research on multiple editions of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, shows significant correlation between news events and patterns of participation on the site (Lih, 2004. Keegan, 2013). The Japanese edition is no different in this regard, with news events, and related articles, receiving more views and edits. However, the Japanese edition, and the community of volunteers operating it clearly exhibit aspects of Japanese web culture, dynamics and modes of interaction.<\/p>\n
Wikipedia has been discussed as an example of \u201cthe Wisdom of Crowds\u201d (Surowiecki, 2004), or \u201ccollective intelligence\u201d (Levi, 1997), where as the \u00a0Japanese term became sh<\/em>\u016bg<\/em>\u014dchi<\/em>\uff08\u96c6\u5408\u77e5). Unlike the more traditional term\u00a0 sh<\/em>\u016b<\/em>chi <\/em>(\u8846\u77e5) which implies a notion of \u201ccommon knowledge\u201d shared by everyone, sh<\/em>\u016bg<\/em>\u014dchi <\/em>implies technical aggregation of information in order to assemble comprehensive and accurate knowledge. Others in Japan have also used the term IA (intelligence amplification) (Nishijima, 2015).<\/p>\n In Japanese historiographies of the Internet, one can easily notice an emphasis on the \u201cuniqueness \u201cof the Japanese Web. In post-bubble 1990s Japan, the preposition suggests, the Internet fostered a culture of cynicism and conservatism. Used predominantly by young, unemployed or marginalized communities, the Web was conceived as a technological means to escape reality rather than to transform it. Social interaction online was mostly anonymous, and supported the free-flow of non-branded information. Critics claim that \u201cprofit hatred\u201d (\u5acc\u5132), clear separation of the online sphere from \u201creal life\u201d (\u30ea\u30a2\u5145), \u201ccopy\u201d or \u201csharing\u201d culture (\u30b3\u30d4\u30fc) and flaming dynamics (\u708e\u4e0a) are the characteristics that made Japanese online communities unique from a global perspective (Kawakami, 2015; Sasaki, 2015). \u00a0In this environment, some argue, sustaining Wikipedia\u2019s \u201cgood faith\u201d culture (Reagle, 2010) is a challenging endeavor.<\/p>\n Statistical evidence from Wikipedia corroborates many of these assumptions. First, the topical expansion of the Japanese edition leans more towards popular culture than other editions with articles on animation, music and TV getting far more edits and views (Yasseri, et al., 2014). Second, anonymous (or IP based) edits are more common on the Japanese editing than any other major edition. Third, discussion on the \u201ctalk\u201d pages is Japan is in most cases shorter than other editions. And lastly, Japanese law stipulates strict restrictions on privacy (in articles on criminal cases for example), and different copyright laws (GFDL applies, but the \u201cfair use\u201d clause mostly does not).<\/p>\n The Japanese web user is also much more on the move than users in other countries. As research from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications indicates, Japanese users access the Internet from mobile devices, and use mobile applications much more than PC or web browsers. This has a lot to do with long commuting times (about 2 hours, on average, a day in the Kanto area for example), and the popularity of train travel. Since editing Wikipedia from a PC browser is favorable (in terms of convenience and verity of options), passive consumption of information is more prevalent in general, but also in the case of Wikipedia.<\/p>\n However, all of these obstacles do not stop articles on news events from being exceptionally popular both in edits and views.\u00a0 In my talk, I showed how a \u201ctrace ethnography\u201d method (Geiger and Ribes, 2011) could be used to see the rich discussion on news events and their subsequent construction into news-based knowledge. Relying on Wikipedia policies and guidelines, Japanese users apply \u201ccleanup tags\u201d to direct the expansion of articles. In the discussion on the Japanese Supreme Court ruling on separate family names for married couples, for instance, Japanese users sought a global comparative view by attaching the \u201ctoo Japanocentric\u201d cleanup tag.\u00a0 In other examples, I\u2019ve shown how specific media sources (daily national newspapers for example), are preferred by editors on Wikipedia more than others (weeklies, websites).\u00a0 Every month, as Wikipedia\u2019s Zeitgeist statistic shows, news related articles are among the top 10 most edited ones.<\/p>\n News work on the Japanese Wikipedia shows how pseudonymous, or anonymous, online communities are able to sort and filter information into contextual knowledge on current events. In Japan, where open participation is still associated with trolling, or abusive online behavior, it also exemplifies that ethical online collaboration is indeed possible in certain cases. Moreover, in a country that still exhibits extremely low user participation in the news industry, it serves as a model negotiating Japan\u2019s anonymous web culture with a potentially sustainable one for collaborative journalism.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Citations<\/strong><\/p>\n Geiger, R. Stuart, and David Ribes. “Trace ethnography: Following coordination through documentary practices.” In\u00a0System Sciences (HICSS), 2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on<\/em>, pp. 1-10. IEEE, 2011.<\/p>\n Kawakami, Nobuo (ed.) Netto ga unda bunka: dare mo hy\u014dgensha no jidai (Net-borne Culture: The Age when Everybody Speaks). Tokyo: Kadokawa Gakugei, 2015.<\/p>\n Keegan B (2013) \u201cA History of Newswork on Wikipedia\u201d, In WikiSym \u201913 Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, Hong Kong, China, 5\u20137 August, pp. 7:1\u2013 7:10. New York: ACM. Available at: http:\/\/doi.acm.org\/10.1145\/2491055.2491062 [accessed 14 January 2014].<\/p>\n L\u00e9vy, Pierre.\u00a0Collective intelligence<\/em>. Plenum\/Harper Collins, 1997.<\/p>\n Lih, Andrew. “Wikipedia as participatory journalism: Reliable sources? Metrics for evaluating collaborative media as a news resource.”\u00a0Nature<\/em>, 2004.<\/p>\n Nishijima, Taooru (ed.) Yuz\u0101 ga tsukuru chi no katachi: shug\u014dchi no shinka (the \u201cwisdom\u201d created by users: deepening the wisdom of crowds). Tokyo: Kadokawa Gakugei, 2015.<\/p>\n Reagle, Joseph Michael.\u00a0Good faith collaboration: The culture of Wikipedia<\/em>. MIT Press, 2010.<\/p>\n Sasaki, Toshinao.\u00a0 Netto genron k\u016bkan\u00a0 keisei (The formation of the Web\u2019s public sphere). In: Kawakami, Nobuo (ed.) Netto ga unda bunka: dare mo hy\u014dgensha no jidai (Net-borne Culture: The Age when Everybody Speaks). Tokyo: Kadokawa Gakugei, 2015.<\/p>\n Yasseri, Taha, Anselm Spoerri, Mark Graham, and J\u00e1nos Kert\u00e9sz. “The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis.” in Global Wikipedia: International and Cross-Cultural Issues in Online Collaboration, Fichman P., Hara N., eds., Scarecrow Press, 2014. (Omri Reis, PhD Candidate, GSII, UTokyo)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the afternoon of\u00a0June 16, we hold\u00a0the Biotope Salon with the speaker Mr. Omri Reis, PhD candidate of the Un […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediabiotope.com\/projects\/salon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAvailable at SSRN:http:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=2269392<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.2139\/ssrn.2269392<\/a><\/p>\n