The Signpost

Recent research

Informed consent and privacy; newsmaking on Wikipedia; Wikipedia and organizational theories

A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.

Reviewed by Kim Osman

In new research[1] conducted in light of proposed changes to data protection legislation in the European Union (EU), authors Bart Custers, Simone van der Hof, and Bart Schermer conducted a comparative analysis of social media and user-generated content websites’ privacy policies along with a user survey (N=8,621 in 26 countries) and interviews in 13 different EU countries on awareness, values, and attitudes toward privacy online. The authors state consent regarding personal data use is an important concept and observe, “There is mounting evidence that data subjects do not fully contemplate the consequences and risks of personal data processing.”

Custers, van der Hof and Schermer developed a set of criteria for giving informed consent about the use of personal data, including: “Is it clear who is processing the data and who is accountable?” and “Is the information provided understandable?” When existing privacy policies were applied to these criteria, Wikipedia was the worst performing of the sites analyzed and recommends that it makes clear how minors are dealt with and to provide additional clarity around security measures. It also notes that IP addresses may be traced, therefore making “anonymous” Wikipedia users identifiable.

The study did acknowledge issues around self-presentation and identity in different online contexts and the actual need for a site like Wikipedia to have an extensive privacy policy as users afford criteria regarding privacy different value in these different contexts. The authors do note however, “Wikipedia does collect opinions that may be attributable to individuals and that may be considered privacy sensitive.”

This paper is a well-researched summary of the privacy policies of online sites (including major international platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube), and although from a European perspective (where data collection practices are arguably more stringent than in other places in the world), it raises important questions about how Wikipedia approaches its privacy policy in terms of informed user consent, and would be useful reading for anyone with an interest in how online practices are shaping approaches to user privacy.

For researchers requiring more information about ethics in online research visit the Association of Internet Researchers' wiki.


Briefly

Semantic role label features for all records, colours are based on event tag in the Lensing Wikipedia dataset.

Other recent publications

A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.

References

  1. ^ Custers, Bart; Simone van der Hof; Bart Schermer (2014-09-01). "Privacy Expectations of Social Media Users: The Role of Informed Consent in Privacy Policies". Policy & Internet. 6 (3): 268–295. doi:10.1002/1944-2866.POI366. ISSN 1944-2866.
  2. ^ Den Hartogh, Rudolf (2014). The future of the Past: A case study on the representation of the Holocaust on Wikipedia (Masters). Erasmus University Rotterdam.
  3. ^ "Lensing Wikipedia". Simon Fraser University Natural Language Laboratory.
  4. ^ Jasneet Singh Sabharwal: Visualizing Wikipedia using t-SNE
  5. ^ Ford, Heather (2014-08-31). "Infoboxes and cleanup tags: Artifacts of Wikipedia newsmaking". Journalism: 1464884914545739. doi:10.1177/1464884914545739. ISSN 1464-8849. Closed access icon
  6. ^ Kozica, Arjan M. F.; Christian Gebhardt; Gordon Müller-Seitz; Stephan Kaiser (2014-10-13). "Organizational Identity and Paradox An Analysis of the 'Stable State of Instability' of Wikipedia's Identity". Journal of Management Inquiry: 1056492614553275. doi:10.1177/1056492614553275. ISSN 1056-4926. Closed access icon
  7. ^ Simone, Daniela (2013-07-01). Copyright or Copyleft? Wikipedia as a Turning Point for Authorship. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. SSRN 2330766.
  8. ^ Ross, Sara (2014-03-01). Your Day in 'Wiki-Court': ADR, Fairness, and Justice in Wikipedia's Global Community. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. SSRN 2495196.
  9. ^ Desai, Kalpit V.; Roopesh Ranjan (2014-01-07). "Insights from the Wikipedia Contest (IEEE Contest for Data Mining 2011)". arXiv:1405.7393.
  10. ^ Lu Wang, Claire Cardie: A Piece of My Mind: A Sentiment Analysis Approach for Online Dispute Detection Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Short Papers), pages 693–699, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, June 23-25 2014
  11. ^ Fiona Mao,Robert E. Mercer, Lu Xiao: Extracting Imperatives from Wikipedia Article for Deletion Discussions Proceedings of the First Workshop on Argumentation Mining, pages 106–107, Baltimore, Maryland USA, June 26, 2014.
  12. ^ Darryl Maher: Use of Wikipedia by Legal Scholars: Implications for Information Literacy. Master's thesis, School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, submitted June 2014
  13. ^ Sormunen, E. & Alamettälä, T. (2014). Guiding Students in Collaborative Writing of Wikipedia Articles – How to Get Beyond the Black Box Practice in Information Literacy Instruction. In: EdMedia 2014 – World Conference on Educational Media and Technology. Tampere, Finland: June 23-26, 2014
  14. ^ Flati, Tiziano; Daniele Vannella; Tommaso Pasini; Roberto Navigli (2014). "Two Is Bigger (and Better) Than One: the Wikipedia Bitaxonomy Project". Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers): 945–955.
  15. ^ Phillips, Jennifer; Connie Lam; Lisa Palmisano (2014-07-01). "Analysis of the accuracy and readability of herbal supplement information on Wikipedia". Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. 54 (4): 406–414. doi:10.1331/JAPhA.2014.13181. ISSN 1544-3191. Closed access icon
  16. ^ Conti, Riccardo; Emanuel Marzini; Angelo Spognardi; Ilaria Matteucci; Paolo Mori; Marinella Petrocchi (2014). "Maturity Assessment of Wikipedia Medical Articles". Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems. CBMS '14. Washington, DC, USA: IEEE Computer Society. pp. 281--286. doi:10.1109/CBMS.2014.69. ISBN 978-1-4799-4435-4. Closed access icon
  17. ^ Rughinis, Cosima; Bogdana Huma; Stefania Matei; Razvan Rughinis (June 2014). Computer-supported collaborative accounts of major depression: Digital rhetoric on Quora and Wikipedia. 2014 9th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI). pp. 1–6. doi:10.1109/CISTI.2014.6876968. Closed access icon

















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