Submissions/Young Wikipedians’ perceptions of Wikipedia: a case study in Hong Kong

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Review no.

192

Title of the submission

Young Wikipedians’ perceptions of Wikipedia: a case study in Hong Kong

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)

Presentation

Author of the submission

Dr. Chitat Chan

Jeromy-Yu Chan

Deryck Chan

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)

User:Yuyu (yuyu@wikimedia.hk)

User:Deryck_Chan

Country of origin

Hong Kong

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic (Chitat)

Wikimedia Hong Kong (Jeromy-Yu, Deryck)

Personal homepage or blog

http://chitatchan.blogspot.com (Chitat)

http://jeromyu.hk (Jeromy-Yu)

Abstract (please use no less than 300 words to describe your proposal)

The research explores young Chinese Wikipedia users’ perceptions of the credibility of Wikipedia through a focus group discussing the quality of a particular Wikipedia article. A major point of criticism of Wikipedia is its principle of being open for editing by everyone making it unreliable. Instead of focusing on the ways in which Wikipedia could mislead student users, this study focused on the ways in which competent student users could make use of Wikipedia. The notion of media literacy was used as a conceptual device to facilitate the analysis. The findings suggested that a significant contribution of Wikipedia was on the part of information analysis. The platform indeed enabled the young users to assess the quality of information and acquire new information. There was a range of functional features supporting them to make judgments, for example, the “internal links”, “footnotes”, “external links”, “equivalent articles in Wikipedia in other languages”, etc.. These features enabled the users to compare different sources and perspectives and to evaluate the trustworthiness of the article. Wikipedia, when utilized properly, can be a valuable online tool that facilitates students’ information practice.

Chitat and Jeromy are the authors of the essay, and Deryck was one of the interviewees of the focus groups, and also helped in the text transcriptions.

One of the aim of the research is as an academia support Wikimedia Hong Kong' Liberal Studies Toolkit project, funded by Wikimedia Foundation. As member of the Chapter, Jeromy-Yu & Deryck might also share the relate outreach efforts of the project, towards schools, teachers and students.

Track (People and Community/Knowledge and Collaboration/Infrastructure)

Wiki and Education - Wiki in Knowledge Collaboration

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Jeromy, Deryck: yes

Dr Chitat Chan: No, even the submission is accepted

Slides or further information (optional)

Slides

The full essay

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  1. I would be interested in seeing how this plays out in other language wikipedias besides english, Sadads
  2. CT Cooper · talk 18:01, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Vibhijain 13:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Amir E. Aharoni