Negotiating Cultural Values in Social Media: A Case Study from Wikipedia

Wikipedia arguably is one of the most visible examples of the use of social media to enlist volunteers to contribute to a social good. Wikipedia was created to provide an accessible, encyclopedic information resource for people of all nations and cultures. Previous research has shown potential for unacknowledged cultural bias in socio-technical systems. However, the extent to which the technological and social structures of the English Wikipedia are shaped by its western origin and orientation has not been examined. We fill this gap by studying how Wikipedia editors created the culturally controversial article Jyllands-Posten Muhammad Cartoon Controversy. We use Carlile´s boundary-spanning model to illustrate how Wikipedia is unable to satisfactorily resolve the fundamental tension between its stated mission of global access and empowerment and the inherent (but unacknowledged) cultural bias of the technologies and processes employed by the English language Wikipedia community. This case study illustrates how knowledge management systems, even those intended to encompass multiple value systems through the use of an open social media design, have built-in (value) biases through the specific technologies and processes employed in the design.