The long life of Wikipedia: affordances and trust

Costanza Sartoris (), Sasha Piccione () and Caterina Cruciani ()
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Costanza Sartoris: Dept. of Management, Venice School of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venice
Sasha Piccione: Dept. of Management, Venice School of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venice
Caterina Cruciani: Dept. of Management, Venice School of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venice

No 5, Working Papers from Venice School of Management - Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia

Abstract: Social media’s architecture, through affordances, plays an important role in influencing the impact platforms have on political discourse. A unique case in the social media realm is Wikipedia, which, after more than 20 years, is still an active and flourishing community, thanks to its affordances and the social dynamics they entail. In this paper we aim to study how Wikipedia’s volunteers (i.e., contributors), with different motives to participate in the project, use and perceive Wikipedia’s affordances to shed light on how trust, as well as trustworthiness, are crucial determinants for the positive political result of Wikipedia’s “selforganizing bureaucracy.” We do so by leveraging on a large survey dataset with 9,282 Wikipedia’s contributors’ self-reported behaviours and propensities. We explore how different motivations coexist in relationship to trust in the whole system thanks to the affordances it entails, as we believe that it is trust in the system that has been crucial for Wikipedia’s positive survival so far, which, by design, can be assimilated to a public agora.

Keywords: Wikipedia; Social Media; Democracy; Affordance; Trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay, nep-pol and nep-soc
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