Polarization and reliability of news sources in Wikipedia

Abstract

PurposeWikipedia's inclusive editorial policy permits unrestricted participation, enabling individuals to contribute and disseminate their expertise while drawing upon a multitude of external sources. News media outlets constitute nearly one-third of all citations within Wikipedia. However, embracing such a radically open approach also poses the challenge of the potential introduction of biased content or viewpoints into Wikipedia. The authors conduct an investigation into the integrity of knowledge within Wikipedia, focusing on the dimensions of source political polarization and trustworthiness. Specifically, the authors delve into the conceivable presence of political polarization within the news media citations on Wikipedia, identify the factors that may influence such polarization within the Wikipedia ecosystem and scrutinize the correlation between political polarization in news media sources and the factual reliability of Wikipedia's content.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct a descriptive and regression analysis, relying on Wikipedia Citations, a large-scale open dataset of nearly 30 million citations from English Wikipedia. Additionally, this dataset has been augmented with information obtained from the Media Bias Monitor (MBM) and the Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC).FindingsThe authors find a moderate yet significant liberal bias in the choice of news media sources across Wikipedia. Furthermore, the authors show that this effect persists when accounting for the factual reliability of the news media.Originality/valueThe results contribute to Wikipedia’s knowledge integrity agenda in suggesting that a systematic effort would help to better map potential biases in Wikipedia and find means to strengthen its neutral point of view policy.