Why the World Reads Wikipedia

Abstract

As one of the Web's primary multilingual knowledge sources, Wikipedia is read by millions of people across the globe every day. Despite this global readership, little is known about why users read Wikipedia's various language editions. To bridge this gap, we conduct a comparative study by combining a large-scale survey of Wikipedia readers across 14 language editions with a log-based analysis of user activity. We proceed in three steps. First, we analyze the survey results to compare the prevalence of Wikipedia use cases across languages, discovering commonalities, but also substantial differences, among Wikipedia languages with respect to their usage. Second, we match survey responses to the respondents' traces in Wikipedia's server logs to characterize behavioral patterns associated with specific use cases, finding that distinctive patterns consistently mark certain use cases across language editions. Third, we show that certain Wikipedia use cases are more common in countries with certain socioeconomic characteristics; e.g., in-depth reading of Wikipedia articles is substantially more common in countries with a low Human Development Index. These findings advance our understanding of reader motivations and behaviors across Wikipedia languages and have implications for Wikipedia editors and developers of Wikipedia and other Web technologies.

Dwelling on Wikipedia

“…Finally, we return to our study of global reading behavior. Consistent with the results of Lemmerich et al, we find that readers in countries with lower HDI or in the so-called Global South spend more time reading per page view compared to readers in the Global North or in countries with higher HDI [18]. Moreover, this difference is amplified where we would expect users to consume information in depth: on the desktop (non-mobile) site.…”

“…They found that readers in lower-HDI countries are more likely to use Wikipedia in educational contexts and for intrinsic learning, but not for fact-checking [18]. Such motivations and contexts are likely to involve longer sessions and dwell times compared to fact-checking [18,32]. Therefore, we predict that readers in lower-HDI countries and in the Global South are more likely to have longer dwell times on Wikipedia articles.…”

“…How do Wikipedia readers vary across different geographic and developmental contexts? A recent study of readers of different Wikipedia language editions found that readers in countries with a lower human development index (HDI) were more likely to read for in-depth understanding compared to readers in high-HDI countries [18]. However, this study is limited by the use of self-reported data, which can be biased by effects of social desirability and self-selection due to the volunteer nature of web-based surveys [1,14,16,27].…”

“…Our analysis is most closely inspired by Lemmerich et al's large-scale global survey of Wikipedia readers. They found that readers in lower-HDI countries are more likely to use Wikipedia in educational contexts and for intrinsic learning, but not for fact-checking [18]. Such motivations and contexts are likely to involve longer sessions and dwell times compared to fact-checking [18,32].…”

“…We seek to understand differences in Wikipedia's audience between the areas roughly known as the Global North and the Global South. Lemmerich et al show empirical differences between self-reported information seeking behavior between such contexts [18]. These differences are likely related to digital divides or gaps between the knowledge, information and technology resources commonly available in different contexts, which can lead to systematic differences in reading behavior.…”