Gender
Over the last year, scientist Jess Wade has taken to the keyboard to rectify gender bias on Wikipedia. She has written more than 270 entries about forgotten but influential women in science – such as Susan Goldberg, the first female editor of National Geographic. Research shows just 16% of Wikipedia editors are female and only 17% of entries dedicated to notable people are for women.
Western
Research by Oxford University in 2016 revealed that the vast bulk of content written about most African countries on Wikipedia was by editors in Europe and North America. Only 16% of content about sub-Saharan Africa is written by people from the region, while most entries on European countries are written in Europe.
Language
In 2016, researchers at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Germany found that the language of a Wikipedia entry influences the sources used, therefore offering a different version of the truth. In an English-language article about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, for example, 24% of sources were Ukrainian and 20% Russian. In the German version, Russian sources made up 10% of citations and Ukrainian sources only 3%.
Political
A 2011 research paper that analysed almost 30,000 Wikipedia entries about US politics found the website to be slightly biased towards the Democrats. The study found that entries were more likely to use politically charged Democratic phrases (terms like “civil rights”) than Republican ones (“illegal immigration”). Although later entries are less biased, the paper concludes “the average old political article in Wikipedia leans [sic] Democratic”.
Historical
A 2011 paper reviewed thousands of Wikipedia articles and found that, although most articles were accurate, recent events received \the most coverage. Looking at US gubernatorial elections since 1978, the author found that its coverage in the years before 2001 (when Wikipedia was created) was scant. The author concluded that these omissions reflected “the limited expertise and interests of contributors”.
