Cultural Identities in Wikipedias

Abstract

In this paper we study identity-based motivation in Wikipedia as a drive for editors to act congruently with their cultural identity values by contributing with content related to them. To assess its influence, we developed a computational method to identify articles related to the cultural identities associated to a language and applied it to 40 Wikipedia language editions. The results show that about a quarter of each Wikipedia language edition is dedicated to represent the corresponding cultural identities. The topical coverage of these articles reflects that geography, biographies, and culture are the most common themes, although each language shows its idiosyncrasy and other topics are also present. The majority of these articles remain exclusive to each language, which is consistent with the idea that a Cultural Identity is defined in relation to others; as entangled and separated. An analysis of how this content is shared among language editions reveals special links between cultures. The approach and findings presented in this study can help to foster participation and inter-cultural enrichment of Wikipedias. The datasets produced in this study are made available for further research.