A presentation which focuses on the power of Wikipedia and the issues of legitimacy and territorial control related to it. It looks at Wikipedia from a geopolitical perspective and it is based on the experience of the projects WikiAfrica (2006-2012) and Share Your Knowledge (2011-2012). The aim of the presentation is to specifically refer to 1. the offline fallout of Wikipedia and its nationalism; 2. how the offline fallout has been reinforced by the growing number of institutions interested in collaborating with Wikipedia (the so-called GLAMs) and 3. the relevance of Africa within this discourse.
1. The Power of Wikipedia
Legitimacy and Territorial Control
Iolanda Pensa, Scientific director WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge for lettera27 Foundation
Member of Wikimedia Italia and Wikimedia CH
io@pensa.it http://io.pensa.it
Milano, March 2012
This presentation focuses on the power of Wikipedia and the issues of legitimacy and territorial control related to it. It looks at Wikipedia from a geopolitical perspective and it is based on the
experience of the projects WikiAfrica (2006-2012) and Share Your Knowledge (2011-2012). The aim of the presentation is to specifically refer to 1. the offline fallout of Wikipedia and its
nationalism; 2. how the offline fallout has been reinforced by the growing number of institutions interested in collaborating with Wikipedia (the so-called GLAMs) and 3. the relevance of Africa
within this discourse.
Please note that the artworks included are considered first sources; many artists have worked on the concepts I am interested in focusing on and they have expressed them in a very sharp way.
Keywords: Wikipedia, Africa, GLAMs, offline power, legitimacy, control, geography, nationalism, WikiAfrica, Share Your Knowledge.
15. Structure of the Venice Biennale of Art 2005, Iolanda Pensa & Federica Verona, CC by-sa.
The Biennale is structured in national pavilions and an international exhibition. The national pavilions comes from the model of the international world exhibitions of the XIX century.
At the moment the project GLAM is managed on a territorial basis[1]. Wikimedia chapters have a major role in facilitating collaborations at a national and local level, and several chapters
have recognised in this project a very interesting working direction which allows them to position themselves with a specific national role and to develop further their legitimacy both outside
and inside their organisation[2].
[1] The institutions collaborating with Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects are listened in order of continent, Outreach Wiki contributors, "GLAM/Contact us," Outreach Wiki, http://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=GLAM/
Contact_us&oldid=30681 (accessed March 29, 2012).The GLAM monthly newsletter (http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter) is organised by country with some growing exceptions (Wiki Loves Monuments, Open access report, Tool testing
report and Africa).
[2] Among the chapters actively involved in the GLAM project there are the France, UK, Germany, Czech Republic, Serbia, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, Israel, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, India. The case of Wikimedia Italy is quite
peculiar; lettera27 with the project Share Your Knowledge (within which Wikimedia Italy is a partner) has created the project GLAM in Italy and it is contributing to it (Collaborazione al progetto "GLAM" all'interno di "Share Your Knowledge", Board
decision and general assembly ratification, 2011).
16. @ Yinka Shonibare, Scramble for Africa, 2000, 14 chairs, 14 figures, table in Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora, 2003. Commissioned by and courtesy Museum for African Art NY.
But who are the chapters working for[1]? How are the Wikimedia chapters defining the institutions they collaborate with[2]? Who defines GLAMs “ambassadors”[3] and “Wikipedian in
residence”[4]?
[1] The target is unclear and it includes association members, wikipedianias, the Wikimedia community, donors, institutions, national public, Wikimedia Foundation, their nation.
[2] At the moment wikipedians tend to address institutions they know or they are interested in; chapters tend to focus on major national public institutions.
[3] The word “ambassador” is specifically used within the Wikipedia Education Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors and http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Ambassador_Program; there are also Certified Wikipedia
Ambassador http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Certified_Wikipedia_Ambassador. The word has been used also to define a person which facilitate the partnerships between GLAMs and Wikimedia projects http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/
Ambassador_register.
[4] http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence.
17. Internet Map, ChrisHarrison.net.
The most common way of imagining the world is to condemn it to a binary logic: on/off, centre/periphery, Western/non-Western, modern/traditional, North/South, Global South/Global North,
we/they, us/the others.
19. Kai Krause, The True Size of Africa, PD.
Africa is a big issue. The current presence of two approved Wikimedia chapters[1] and of three chapters in discussion[2] do not properly portraits on a middle-long term what the African
contribution to Wikipedia means. Models of cooperation in Africa have always been under discussion, but the growing presence of Chinese investors has rises n the last decades more
questions about which are the “right” models[3].
[1] Wikimedia Kenya (http://wikimedia.or.ke) and Wikimedia South Africa (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_South_Africa).
[2] Current chapters in discussion http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters#In_Africa.
[3] Serge Michel, Michel Beuret, Paolo Woods, China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing's Expansion in Africa, Nation Books, 2010.
22. @ Yinka Shonibare, Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 14.000 hours in “Revue Noire” Nigeria, n.30, 1998, p. 63 and front cover of Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace, MIT Press, 1999.
The five pillar of Wikipedia represent a new and important frame to build and negotiate knowledge and history[1]. I specifically refer to the devastating impact of XIX and XX century
anthropological studies on African history, with the construction of ethnographic groups and its racial ideology; this knowledge on Wikipedia can be reframed through an historiographic
approach, it can be contextualized and presented within the critical discourse[2]. At the moment this is not the case: XIX and XX century anthropological studies are on public domain,
represent on Wikipedia the mainstream knowledge[3], they are exported on Wikipedia offline editions and they are translated into “local languages” with the support of specific Wikimedia
projects.
[1] This is Rasheed Araeen’s concept of rewriting history which differs from the idea that African history has to be written by Africans (ref. Olu Oguibe). According to Rasheed Araeen, history needs to be negotiate and built as a common history and it is a
common and joint responsibility (Rasheed Araeen in Mobile A2K, Festivaletteratura, Manua, 2010).
[2] The critical resource is specifically related to half a century of studies and debates about identity, esotism, otherness and eurocentrism.
[3] List of African ethnic groups on Wikipedia in English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_ethnic_groups. Please note the lack of historiographic information; the ethnic groups are presented as an objective entity. It is also interesting to observe
the description of Ethnic groups within demographic articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_France#Ethnic_groups.
24. WikiAfrica[1] was launched in 2006 with the idea that Wikipedia perfectly represents what lettera27 Foundation considers access to knowledge and knowledge sharing. Based on the image
of La Palabre[2], the project was imagined as a tool to translate lettera27‘s mission, to foster the visibility of African knowledge, to promote African participation online, and to facilitate a new
understanding of what literacy and education are today. Since its beginning the project was conceived as a collaborative project developed with Wikimedia Italia and open to all contributors,
users and institutions.
[1] WikiAfrica project on lettera27 Foundation website http://lettera27.org/index.php?idlanguage=1&zone=9&idprj=47
[2] La Palabre is the tradition of discussing and negotiating in African societies (as Serge Latouche refers to it in Entre mondialisation et décroissance: l'autre Afrique, À plus d'un titre, 2008); Fréderique Keiff, L'arbre à Palabres, Douala, 2007,
commissioned by doual’art http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:L'arbre_à_Palabres.JPG.
31. Orange and Orange Foundation (free Wikipedia on mobile phones)
Creative Commons affiliate
Event: conference/training/workshop
Presentations and events
Research
Archives
Notebooks (Detour, myDetour, WikiAfrica special editions)
Wiki Loves Monuments
WikiAfrica 2012 (in progress)
32. Share Your Knowledge[1] started in 2011 as part of WikiAfrica initiatives and as a consequence of lettera27 need to create metrics related to its work. To produce a quantitative impact on
Wikipedia and to associate this impact to WikiAfrica without branding people and the Wikimedia projects, the idea was to involve institutions. Content of institutions can be made available
with a free license, it can be uploaded in the relevant Wikimedia projects and it is associated to the institution as a source. The system[2] – implemented by Share Your Knowledge – is
currently allowing WikiAfrica to involve 55 international institutions.
[1] Share Your Knowledge project on lettera27 website http://lettera27.org/index.php?idlanguage=1&zone=9&idprj=47.
[2] The two phases procedure created by Share Your Knowledge is on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Share_Your_Knowledge.
35. creative commons & wikipedia
for cultural institutions
period June July Augu September O ober November
1 jun-1oth nov 2011
For this analysis we considered all new pages
created from the beginning of the proje
Share Yourk Knowledge until the 10th
of November. For the Wikimedia
contributions we considered all the pages
created by the partner in itution in Italian
and English during this period.
contributions to wikipedia
459 articles s
860˙302 bytes
One byte is a unit of orage capable
of holding a single chara er.
A text of 1500 chara ers corresponds
to a file of 1500 bytes.
contributions
to wikimedia commons
2993 images
s
wikipedia templates
Archivio Pietro Pensa
Careof s
Cosv
Fe ival del Cinema Africano di Verona
s
Fe ival del Cinema Africano di Milano
Fondazione Cariplo
s
Lettera27
Officina Griot s
s
Bytes added by m.Casanova and Marcok
(Wikipedia’s tutors of the proje )
Bytes added by other users
DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, Share Your Knowledge, 11/2011, CC BY-SA.
40. Daddy Buy Me a Pony, Festive season greeting card, client Pro Helvetia, December 2003.
I would like to conclude with a question: is everybody ok in creating articles for all cities, villages and populated areas in Africa in all 284 languages of Wikipedia?
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Iolanda Pensa - io@pensa.it - http://io.pensa.it
Iolanda Pensa works for lettera27 as scientific director of the projects WikiAfrica and Share Your Knowledge. She is the curator with Roberto Casati of the international research project
Mobile Access to Knowledge: Culture and Safety in Africa promoted by SUPSI University. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology and in territorial government and planning at the EHESS in Paris
in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano, with a thesis on the Dakar Biennale and the impact of cultural grants in Africa. She accomplished researches on the cultural system in Dakar,
Cairo, Douala, Cape Town, Minsk, Tehran, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Europe and the US. She taught Art Economy at Nuova Accademia di Belle in Milan (2007-2011) and she is
correspondent for Africa for the magazine “Domus”/Journal. As a volunteer she is the coordinator of Ecomuseo delle Grigne.