Information Fortification: An Online Citation Behavior

Citation: Andrea Forte, Nazanin Andalibi, Tim Gorichanaz, Meen Chul Kim, Thomas Park, Aaron Halfaker (2018) Information Fortification: An Online Citation Behavior. ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work 2018 (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Information Fortification: An Online Citation Behavior
Download: http://andreaforte.net/ForteInformationFortification.pdf
Tagged: Computer Science (RSS) Citation (RSS), Bibliometrics (RSS), Open Collaboration (RSS), Wikipedia (RSS), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (RSS)

Summary

This paper that shows that the emic meanings of citation on Wikipedia are different from those of academic citation, because defending the presence and visibility of material on wikipedia is important. The main contribution is the concept of "information fortification" which means the use of citation to defend the presence of material on Wikipedia.

The paper aims to contribute to help us understand what citations mean why why people cite. Alex Csiszar, an Awesome historian of science who told us about how academic publishing, peer review, and citation came to have such stature. An early theory of citation came from Henry Small, who saw them not as merely devices for attribution, but also as referents to the ideas being cited. Latour and Woolgar's understanding of citation in science as a tool for defending knowledge claims and as a currency representing credit that is used to obtain grants and prestige. Citations in this way serve as means for distributing credit among players of the academic game.

However, since the rise of the Internet citation practices have become much more widespread. People cite things on Wikipedia, on Blogs, on Twitter, in online discussions and so on. Bibliometricists and Internet researchers study these citation graphs, but risk making incorrect assumptions if they think these citations mean the same things that academic citations do.

In their article, Forte et al. investigate citation practices on Wikipedia and find that citations have a quite different meaning in this setting. Using a mixture of several methods including interviews with prolific citers, some simple data analysis of ref citations to compare practices on featured and non-featured articles, and inspection of 35 random articles "to develop an artifact-based understanding of how citations are used in the development of articles." They use humanistic methods in an attempt to construct a monomyth and to defamiliarize themselves with citation to enable the discover of novel meanings.

Unlike what Andrea Forte used to think, citing in Wikipedia isn't much about the marketplace of credibility associated with academic science. Instead it is more militaristic.

There are two kinds of controversy that lead to lots of citation activity.

1. Naturally arising controversy 2. Manufactured controversy (like during the review process)

Things that are widely known don't really need citations. Things that are likely to be challenged do. But like anything can be considered contentious.

Seems like some editors think it's the job of the original editor to fix Template:Citation needed.

Wikipedians preferred fewer, high quality citations.

Wikipedians often reffered to citation as a defensive act. This is citation activity designed to preserve the visibility content on Wikipedia.

Wikipedian's don't cite to signal membership in theoretical camps, appease reviewers, or prove expertise.

Facts may be eroded or incorporated in the academy (these are Latour and Merton's terms for how knowledge becomes taken for granted). But the same facts may still need citation for defense in the broad public that collaborates on WP.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

This is a forthcoming paper about the meaning of citation on Wikipedia. It makes a novel and interesting theoretical contribution to those interested in Wikipedia in and of itself, and in cultural practices surrounding knowledge production and online discourse. It is also notable for it wide-range of methods relying on interviews, but also including quantitative graphs, and humanistic methods