Legitimacy and efficacy: The blackout of Wikipedia

Oz, Ayelet

doi:10.5210/fm.v17i12.4043

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists emerged as important sources of attestation that the proposals were not, in fact, pro-business, but were instead simply rentseeking measures for incumbent industries too slow to innovate their way to wealth. Beyond these still-traditional but usually marginalized sources of authority, Wikipedia emerged as a powerful source of authority in defining what the proposed bills actually said while at the same time using a remarkably participatory process to determine that the community would take a political stand (though not in the entries describing the legislation)-a stand that influenced, literally, millions of people on January 18 (Oz, 2012). Finally, despite concerns about the hollowing of public discourse, one major source of credibility in online media was a sustained practice of linking to sources and thorough explanations of competing proposals coupled with catchy, entertaining YouTube videos that were in many cases still quite detailed and factually accurate.…”

Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA Debate

Benkler¹,

Roberts

Faris

et al. 2015

Political Communication

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This article investigates the public debate over proposed U.S. legislation designed to give prosecutors and copyright holders new tools to pursue suspected online copyright violations. We compiled, mapped, and analyzed a set of 9,757 stories published over 16 months relevant to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). This study applies a mixed-methods approach that combines text and link analysis with human coding and informal interviews to map the evolution of the controversy over time and to analyze the mobilization, roles, and interactions of various actors. We find a vibrant, diverse, and decentralized networked public sphere that exhibited broad participation, leveraged topical expertise, and successfully reframed a debate and focused public sentiment to shape national public policy. A network of small-scale commercial tech media, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals fulfilled the fourth estate function; traditional media then amplified the work of these actors. The campaign involved substantial experimentation and rapid development of mobilization strategies. We observe an increased public awareness of an agenda originating in the networked public sphere, which emerged successfully despite substantial expenditures attempting to produce a mass media narrative that favored the legislation. Moreover, we witness what we call an attention backbone, in which more trafficked sites amplify less-visible individual voices on specific subjects. The data suggest that, at least in this case, the networked public sphere enabled a dynamic public discourse that involved both individual and organizational participants and offered substantive discussion of complex issues contributing to affirmative political action.

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Section: Findings and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA Debate

Benkler¹,

Roberts

Faris

et al. 2015

Political Communication

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“…Wikipedia creates educative dividends of multiple kinds, from substantive knowledge in multiple areas to collaborative editing know‐how to a political understanding of cooperation within a distributed setting, and in this particular case, a heightened sense of Internet politics most evident in the protests against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) in 2012 (Oz, ). It allows participation in goals and tasks as users can flesh out, correct, or edit entries but also can debate the meaning of “the encyclopedia” in ways that affect its standards and organization.…”

Section: Making the Difference Clear: Participation In Wikipedia And mentioning

confidence: 99%

Seven dimensions of contemporary participation disentangled

Kelty¹,

Panofsky

Currie³

et al. 2014

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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Participation is today central to many kinds of research and design practice in information studies and beyond. From user-generated content to crowdsourcing to peer production to fan fiction to citizen science, the concept remains both unexamined and heterogeneous in its definition. Intuitions about participation are confirmed by some examples, but scandalized by others, and it is difficult to pinpoint why participation seems to be robust in some cases and partial in others. In this paper we offer an empirically based, comparative analysis of participation that demonstrates its multidimensionality and provides a framework that allows clear distinctions and better analyses of the role of participation. We derive 7 dimensions of participations from the literature on participation and exemplify those dimensions using a set of 102 cases of contemporary participation that include uses of the Internet and new media.

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“…Subsequently the Wikipedia site was blacked out on 18 January. (For more information on the mechanics of Wikipedia governance that were used in this particular process of decision making, the reader may want to visit Oz, 2012. )…”

Section: The Chronology Of Wikipedia and The Sopa Votementioning

confidence: 99%

The day Wikipedia stood still: Wikipedia’s editors’ participation in the 2012 anti-SOPA protests as a case study of online organization empowering international and national political opportunity structures

Konieczny

2014

Current Sociology

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1 international social movement organization, whose 24 hour-long blackout of its popular website was a major factor in the success of the anti-SOPA protests. Wikipedia's blackout was an expression of an international political opportunity structure in the form of worldwide awareness and protests, which in turn enabled a national political opportunity structure by informing and mobilizing American citizens.

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Legitimacy and efficacy: The blackout of Wikipedia

Abstract: The hallmark of the successful online protest against SOPA was the blackout of Wikipedia for a day. This paper tracks the internal dynamics that led to Wikipedia’s blackout and focuses on the place that legitimacy and authority had in crafting the debate.

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA Debate

Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA Debate

Seven dimensions of contemporary participation disentangled

The day Wikipedia stood still: Wikipedia’s editors’ participation in the 2012 anti-SOPA protests as a case study of online organization empowering international and national political opportunity structures

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