David W. Mcdonald
Mark Zachry
Skip Abstract Section
Abstract
Wikipedia is an important information source for much of the world. One well-established problem is that editors of Wikipedia are overwhelmingly men. This gender gap in participation has resulted in a concern that the content suffers biases as a result of the bias in participation. This problem is hard to study, because the relationships between participation, gender identity, and content have not been established. Prior studies, mostly with children, have shown some differences in topical preferences based on sex. However, this issue has not been studied with adults and has not been considered from more than a binary stance. In this study, we work to understand how gender identity relates to topical preferences. Through an empirical study, we ask participants to declare a gender identity and then present them with pairs of topical article content from Wikipedia. Through thousands of participants and tens of thousands of paired content trials, we uncover relationships between self-declared gender identity and topical preferences. Further, by focusing on topics that have a statistically significant bias, we leverage two of Wikipedia's category systems to illustrate relative categorical differences that are similar to categorical differences described in prior work. The discussion focuses on the subtly of these differences, potential future research, and the implications for interventions based on topical content. Further, the results help us reflect on relationships that might explain the persistent and worsening gender gap in participation.
- Julia Adams and Hannah Brückner. 2015. Wikipedia, sociology, and the promise and pitfalls of Big Data. Big Data Soc. 2, 2 (2015), 2053951715614332. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715614332Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Judd Antin, Raymond Yee, Coye Cheshire, and Oded Nov. 2011. Gender differences in Wikipedia editing. In Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym'11). ACM, New York, NY, 11–14. DOI:http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2038558.2038561 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dawn Bazely. 2018. “Why Nobel winner Donna Strickland didn't have a Wikipedia page. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/08/why-nobel-winner-donna-strickland-didnt-have-wikipedia-page/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0076c36db719.Google Scholar
- Katherine Bischoping. 1993. Gender differences in conversation topics, 1922–1990. Sex Roles 28, 1/2 (1993), 1–18.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Sapna Cheryan, Jessica Schwartz Cameron, Zach Katagiri, and Benoît Monin. 2015. Manning Up: Threatened men compensate by disavowing feminine preferences and embracing masculine attributes. Soc. Psychol. 46, 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000239.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Benjamin Collier and Julia Bear. 2012. Conflict, criticism, or confidence: An empirical examination of the gender gap in Wikipedia contributions. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'12). ACM, New York, NY, 383–392. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Maitraye Das, Brent Hecht, and Darren Gergle. 2019. The gendered geography of contributions to openstreetmap: Complexities in self-focus bias. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 563. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Djellel Difallah, Elena Filatova, and Panos Ipeirotis. 2018. Demographics and dynamics of mechanical Turk workers. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, 135–143. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Peter J. L Fisher. 1988. The reading preferences of third, fourth, and fifth graders. Reading Horizons 29, 1 (1988), 62–70Google Scholar
- Alice F. Freed and Alice Greenwood. 1996. Women, men, and type of talk: What makes the difference? Language Soc. 25 (1996), 1–26.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Ruediger Glott, Philipp Schmidt, Rishab Ghosh. 2010. Wikipedia survey. Technical report, UNUMERIT, Maastricht, Netherlands. Retrieved from https://www.ris.org/uploadi/editor/1305050082Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf.Google Scholar
- Eduardo Graells-Garrido, Mounia Lalmas, and Filippo Menczer. 2015. First women, second sex: Gender bias in Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext & Social Media (HT'15). ACM, New York, NY, 165–174. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2700171.2791036 Google ScholarDigital Library
- Daniel A. Gross. 2018. An annual feminist editing session takes on Wikipedia's gender problem. Retrieved from https://hyperallergic.com/429353/wikipedia-edit-a-thon-moma/.Google Scholar
- Adelaide Haas and Mark A. Sherman. 1982. Reported topics of conversation among same-sex adults. Commun. Quart. 30, 4 (1982), 332–342Google ScholarCross Ref
- Aaron Halfaker, R. Stuart Geiger, Jonathan T. Morgan, and John Riedl. 2013. The rise and decline of an open collaboration system: How Wikipedia's reaction to popularity is causing its decline. Amer. Behav. Sci. 57, 5 (2013), 664–688.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw. 2015. Mind the skills gap: the role of Internet know-how and gender in differentiated contributions to Wikipedia, information. Commun. Soc. 18, 4 (2015), 424–442, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2014.957711Google ScholarCross Ref
- Alex Hern. 2014. Wikipedia “edit-a-thon” seeks to boost number of women editors. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/mar/04/wikipeadi-edit-a-thon-boost-women-editors.Google Scholar
- Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw. 2013. The Wikipedia gender gap revisited: Characterizing survey response bias with propensity score estimation. PLoS ONE 8, 6 (2013), e65782. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0065782Google ScholarCross Ref
- H. C. Henderson. 1897. Report of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction of New York State. II: 978–991.Google Scholar
- Cheryl L. Holt and Jon B. Ellis. 1998. Assessing the current validity of the bem sex-role inventory. Sex Roles 39, 11–12 (1998): 929-941.Google ScholarCross Ref
- M. E. Hupfer and B. Detlor. 2006. Gender and web information seeking: A self-concept orientation model. J. Amer. Soc. Info. Sci. Technol. 57, 8 (2006), 1105–1115. Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. M. Jordon. 1921. Children's Interests in Reading. Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.Google Scholar
- Pamela S. Kipers. 1987. Gender and topic. Lang. Soc. 16 (1987), 543–557.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Aniket Kittur, Ed Chi, and Bongwon Suh. 2009. What's in Wikipedia? Mapping topics and conflict using socially annotated category structure. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'09), DOI:10.1145/1518701.1518930. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick. 2012. Selective exposure and reinforcement of attitudes and partisanship before a presidential election. J. Commun. 62 (2012), 628–642. DOI:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01651.xGoogle ScholarCross Ref
- Shyong (Tony) K. Lam, Anuradha Uduwage, Zhenhua Dong, Shilad Sen, David R. Musicant, Loren Terveen, and John Riedl. 2011. WP:Clubhouse?: An exploration of Wikipedia's gender imbalance. In Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym'11). ACM, New York, NY, 1–10. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Talia Lavin. 2016. A feminist edit-a-thon seeks to reshape Wikipedia. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/a-feminist-edit-a-thon-seeks-to-reshape-wikipedia.Google Scholar
- Janette Lehmann, Claudia Muller-Birn, David Laniado, Mounia Lalmas, and Adreas Kaltenbrunner. 2014. Reader preferences and behavior on Wikipedia. Proceedings of the HyperText Conference (HT'14) Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sean Lyons, Linda Duxbury, and Christopher Higgins. 2005. Are gender differences in basic human values a generational phenomenon? Sex Roles 53, 9-10 (2005): 763–778.Google ScholarCross Ref
- McKensie Mack. 2019. Announcing Our Year 6 Campaign: Gender + The Non-Binary. Retrieved from https://artandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/181023341915/announcing-our-year-6-campaign-gender-the.Google Scholar
- Robert Martin. 1997. Girls don't talk about garages!": Perceptions of conversation in the same- and cross-sex friendships. Person. Relation. 4, (1997), 115–130.Google Scholar
- Amanda Menking, David W. McDonald, and Mark Zachry. 2017. Who wants to read this?: A Method for measuring topical representativeness in user generated content systems. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’17). ACM, Portland, OR, 2068–2081. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Amanda Menking, Ingrid Erickson, and Wanda Pratt. 2019. People who can take it: How women Wikipedians negotiate and navigate safety. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'19). ACM, New York, NY, Paper 472, 14 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300702 Google ScholarDigital Library
- D. L. Monson and L. L. Sebesta. 1991. Reading preferences. In Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts, J. Flood, J. M. Jensen, D. Lapp, and J. R. Squire (Eds.). 664–673.Google Scholar
- H. T. Moore. 1922. Further data concerning sex differences. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 17 (1922), 210–214.Google Scholar
- Jonathan T. Morgan, Siko Bouterse, Heather Walls, and Sarah Stierch. 2013. Tea and sympathy: Crafting positive new user experiences on Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative work (CSCW'13). ACM, New York, NY, 839–848. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2441776.2441871 Google ScholarDigital Library
- I. A. Nikoloudakis, C. Vandelanotte, A. L. Rebar, S. Schoeppe, S. Alley, M. J. Duncan, and C. E. Short. 2018. Examining the correlates of online health information–Seeking behavior among men compared with women. Amer. J. Men's Health 12, 5 (2018), 1358–1367.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Simone Paolo Ponzetto and Michael Strube. 2007. Knowledge derived from Wikipedia for computing semantic relatedness. J. Artific. Intell. Res. 30, 1 (2007), 181–212. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lisa Posch, Arnim Bleier, Fabian Flöck, and Markus Strohmaier. 2018. Characterizing the global crowd workforce: A cross-country comparison of crowdworker demographics. Retrieved from https://arXiv:1812.05948.Google Scholar
- R. Rada, H. Mili, E. Bicknell, and M. Blettner. 1989. Development and application of a metric on semantic nets. IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybernet. 19 (1989), 17–30.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Thomas Schmidt and Christian Wolff. 2016. Personality and Information behavior in web search. Proceedings of the 79th ASIS&T Annual Meeting. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jerome R. Sehulster. 2006. Things we talk about, how frequently, and to whom: Frequency of topics in everyday conversation as a function of gender, age and marital status. Amer. J. Psychol. 119, 3 (2006), 407–432.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Y. K. Seock and L. R. Bailey. 2008. The influence of college students' shopping orientations and gender differences on online information searches and purchase behaviours. Int. J. Consum. Studies 32, 2 (2008), 113–121.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Michael Strube and Simone Paolo Ponzetto. 2006. WikiRelate! computing semantic relatedness using Wikipedia. Proceedings of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence Annual Conference (AAAI’06). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Brian Sturm. 2003. The information and reading preferences of North Carolina children. School Library Media Res. 6 (2003), 1–30Google Scholar
- Krzysztof Suchecki, Alkim Almila Akdag Salah, Cheng Gao, and Andrea Scharnhorst. 2012. Evolution of Wikipedia's category structure. Adv. Complex Syst. 15 (2012). DOI:10.1142/S0219525912500683.Google Scholar
- Kate Summers. 2013. Adult reading habits and preferences in relation to gender differences. Ref. User Services Quart. 52, 3 (2013), 243–249.Google Scholar
- Mohamed Ali Hadj Taieb, Mohamet Ben Aouicha, and Abdelmajid Ben Hamadou. 2013. Computing semantic relatedness using Wikipedia features. Knowl.-Based Syst. 50 (2013), 260–278. 10.1016/j.knosys.2013.06.015.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Deborah Tannen. 1990. Gender differences in topical coherence: Creating involvement in best friend's talk. Discourse Process. 13 (1990), 73–90.Google ScholarCross Ref
- K. Thornton and D. W. McDonald. 2012. Tagging Wikipedia: Collaboratively creating a category system. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP'12). Google ScholarDigital Library
- C. Urquhart and A. Yeoman. 2010. Information behaviour of women: Theoretical perspectives on gender. J. Document. 66, 1 (2010), 113–139. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1108/00220411011016399Google ScholarCross Ref
- U.S. 2010 Decennial Census. 2010. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.2010.html.Google Scholar
- C. Van Slyke, C. L. Comunale, and F. Belanger. 2002. Gender differences in perceptions of Web-based shopping. Commun. ACM, 45, 7 (2002), 82–86. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Claudia Wagner, Eduardo Graells-Garrido, David Garcia, and Filippo Menczer. 2016. Women through the glass ceiling: Gender asymmetries in Wikipedia. EPJ Data Sci. 5, 5 (2016) DOI:10.1140/epjds/s13688-016-0066-4Google Scholar
- D. Warner and J. D. Procaccino. 2004. Toward wellness: Women seeking health information. J. Amer. Soc. Info. Sci. Technol. 55, 8 (2004), 709–730. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wikimedia Foundation. 2011. New Editors Survey. Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Editor_Survey_Report_-_April_2011.pdf.Google Scholar
- Wikimedia Foundation. 2018. Community Engagement Insights 2018. Retrieved from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/2018_Report.Google Scholar
- Wikipedia. 2019a. Wikipedia: Systematic bias. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias.Google Scholar
- Wikipedia. 2019b. Wikipedia: Statistics. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics.Google Scholar
- Ed Yong. 2012. Edit-a-thon gets women scientists into Wikipedia. Nature. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/news/edit-a-thon-gets-women-scientists-into-wikipedia-1.11636.Google Scholar
- Torsten Zesch and Iryna Gurevych. 2007. Analysis of the Wikipedia category graph for NLP applications. Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on TextGraphs: Graph-based Algorithms for Natural Language Processing. Association for Computational Linguistics, 1–8.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- On the Alignment Between Self-Declared Gender Identity and Topical Content from Wikipedia
Recommendations
Gender identity and sexual orientation perceived oppressions in digital systems user interfaces: an exploratory study
IHC '15: Proceedings of the 14th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing SystemsBoosted by feminist movements, research in HCI has been covering more about gender and sexuality. However, few studies are dedicated to the experience of lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender people (LGBT). There is also little formulation regarding ...
The Gender Perspective in Wikipedia: A Content and Participation Challenge
WWW '22: Companion Proceedings of the Web Conference 2022Wikipedia is one of the most widely used information sources in the world. Although one of the guiding pillars of this digital platform is ensuring access to the diversity of human knowledge from a neutral point of view, there is a clear and persistent ...
Gender differences in Wikipedia editing
WikiSym '11: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open CollaborationAs Wikipedia has become an indispensable source of online information, concerns about who writes, edits, and maintains it have come to the forefront. In particular, the 2010 UNU-MERIT survey found evidence of a significant gender skew: fewer than 13% of ...
Comments