Post by pieter on Oct 2, 2018 10:07:10 GMT -7
Wikipedia versus Encyclopedia Britannica
The collaboratively edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia is among the most popular websites in the world. Subsequently, it poses a great challenge to traditional encyclopedias, which for centuries have set the standards of society's knowledge with their printed editions. It is, therefore, important to study the impact of social media on the standards of our knowledge. This longitudinal panel study analyzed the framing of content in encyclopedia entries of top Fortune companies in Wikipedia and the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica in 2006, 2008, and 2010. Content analyses of the length, tonality, and topics of 3,985 sentences showed that Wikipedia entries were significantly longer, were more positively and negatively framed, and focused more on corporate social responsibilities and legal and ethical issues than the online entries of the traditional encyclopedia, which were predominantly neutral. The findings stress that the knowledge-generation processes in society appear to be fundamentally shifting because of the use of social media collaboration. These changes significantly impact which information becomes available to society and how it is framed.
P.S.- This is why often use the Encyclopedia Britannica and my Dutch Winkler Prins encyclopedia next to Wikipedia. To be honest if I use Wikipedia in a subject I often (almost always) read the Encyclopedia Britannica version of the topic and sometimes the Winkler Prins version. If I a sure I can rely on and trust the Wikipedia text I will use it. If I have doubts after double checking I won't use it. And in Jewish or Central- and Eastern-European topics I sometimes go to the Jewish Virtual Library, for instance like this topic: www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/warsaw-poland And I often try to find serious quality newspapers and magazines in the Anglo-Saxon world or Continental European news sources in English (German, Dutch, French, Russian; like Euronews, Deutsche Welle [DW] and Der Spiegel Online English and France24) or Arab, Israeli and Persian (Iranian) if it is about international and Middle-eastern subjects (Jerusalem Post, Haarertz, I24, Al Jazeera -Qatari-, Al Arabiya -Saoudi-Arabian- and Press TV -Iranian-). Maybe my sources are sometimes slightly more European than my American Forum friends on this Forum, but I stil watch Fox news (the conservative, Trumpist and Republican conservative view), Breitabart, CNN, ABC, Young Turks, The Young Turks, HuffPost, the New York Times and the Washington Post regularly.
The collaboratively edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia is among the most popular websites in the world. Subsequently, it poses a great challenge to traditional encyclopedias, which for centuries have set the standards of society's knowledge with their printed editions. It is, therefore, important to study the impact of social media on the standards of our knowledge. This longitudinal panel study analyzed the framing of content in encyclopedia entries of top Fortune companies in Wikipedia and the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica in 2006, 2008, and 2010. Content analyses of the length, tonality, and topics of 3,985 sentences showed that Wikipedia entries were significantly longer, were more positively and negatively framed, and focused more on corporate social responsibilities and legal and ethical issues than the online entries of the traditional encyclopedia, which were predominantly neutral. The findings stress that the knowledge-generation processes in society appear to be fundamentally shifting because of the use of social media collaboration. These changes significantly impact which information becomes available to society and how it is framed.
P.S.- This is why often use the Encyclopedia Britannica and my Dutch Winkler Prins encyclopedia next to Wikipedia. To be honest if I use Wikipedia in a subject I often (almost always) read the Encyclopedia Britannica version of the topic and sometimes the Winkler Prins version. If I a sure I can rely on and trust the Wikipedia text I will use it. If I have doubts after double checking I won't use it. And in Jewish or Central- and Eastern-European topics I sometimes go to the Jewish Virtual Library, for instance like this topic: www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/warsaw-poland And I often try to find serious quality newspapers and magazines in the Anglo-Saxon world or Continental European news sources in English (German, Dutch, French, Russian; like Euronews, Deutsche Welle [DW] and Der Spiegel Online English and France24) or Arab, Israeli and Persian (Iranian) if it is about international and Middle-eastern subjects (Jerusalem Post, Haarertz, I24, Al Jazeera -Qatari-, Al Arabiya -Saoudi-Arabian- and Press TV -Iranian-). Maybe my sources are sometimes slightly more European than my American Forum friends on this Forum, but I stil watch Fox news (the conservative, Trumpist and Republican conservative view), Breitabart, CNN, ABC, Young Turks, The Young Turks, HuffPost, the New York Times and the Washington Post regularly.