Watered down Wikipedia: political correctness, history and consensus

In an earlier post I discussed issues around recorded history and I want to elaborate on that a bit because it really is one of the core topics of this blog.
Essentially, I think that the internet, and Web 2.0 in particular, has the potential to allow us the opportunity to lessen the chances of a skewed, biased or manipulated version of historical events being passed on or taught as fact. I was born and raised in South Africa, and I know that some of what I was taught at school in regards to the countries’ history and colonisation had been positioned in my school textbooks to ensure that we never entertained questions about South Africas colonisation and the methods undertaken to achieve it. I am sure this is the same in many Western countries. Colonisation was all about ‘discovery’ and ‘adventure’ and those who embarked in those initial journeys were ‘brave’ and ‘heroes’. And sure, they probably were pretty brave and for them it was all about the adventure and discovery, but at no stage was I taught about that period of history from an indigenous perspective. If I had been, would it have framed my ideas about the political strife of the country in a different way?

I think you can probably see what I am getting at here; that the ability to debate matters of historical relevance in order to come to a consensus on them (even if the consensus is a differentiation of opinion) on a platform which allows all with access to see the debate in its entirety would, a) mean that the accounts of that event were as close to the truth as possible and, b) that general opinions on certain issues stemmed from a place of truthful representation of those events, rather than a biased or false one. The results of this I could dream about for days, but, of course, no system exists at present which could really initiate or mobilise this kind of discourse. Once again, the closest thing we have at present is Wikipedia and although it goes far to lay the groundwork it is also at present very young and somewhat flawed. For example, how many Wikipedia users actually read the discussion pages behind an article. Probably this is dependant on the kind of information sought, but this leads me to my next set of questions: how can users rest assured that they are able to retrieve all the relevant information from Wikipedia when with mass collaboration comes debate and thus compromise as to what is the truth or is relevant and what is not? The risk for the egalitarian model of the Internet as I have laid out is then that “collaborative intelligence leads to bland compromises; collective intelligence to populism and even to tunnel vision.” According to Marijn de Waal, the results “may be democratic but it is not good for society or for the quality of cultural production”.

I wrote an essay on this recently and used this as my example: During the late 20th Century a common place topic to joke about was how political correctness had become so pertinent to society that everything in the end had been watered down so much so as not to offend anyone, to an almost ridiculous point. The classic example of this is the attempts at banning and reediting of Enid Blyton’s Noddy books as a result of the main characters close friendship with Big Ears, which some took to imply a covert homosexual relationship. The subsequent Noddy publications and television shows therefore carefully omit subject matter which could be read as (homo)sexual, namely instances where Big Ears might have stayed the night at Noddy’s house. For a child, sleep over’s are an innocent part of growing up and is important for personal confidence and social bonding, and yet in this context that activity was omitted from the work due to the existence of a possibility that it may be perceived the wrong way.

The ‘Noddy’ page on Wikipedia fails to mention the controversy surrounding Big Ears and only briefly refers to the well-known controversy involving the black-faced Golliwogg characters, which happened in the early 1960s. Through attempts to be neutral the article fails to properly address an instance of social importance (an open discussion of media represented racism during the civil rights movement), instead stating that the inclusion of the Golliwoggs dolls were omitted due to the characters “fall[ing] out of favour” – falling out of favour with whom is not addressed.

Wikipedia’s ‘Noddy’ page concerns itself with description and reserves the ideological discussions for the ‘discussions’ page. The success of Wikipedia in embodying Charles Leadbetters We-Think model relies heavily on the inclusion of a discussion board for each topic and the transparency of the platform itself, as mentioned in an earlier post. Although a seemingly irrelevant example in the context of historical events and accuracy of representation, it illustrates the point that de Waal makes above and highlights the infancy in the development of such an online system.

Although obviously flawed, Wikipedia offers us a preview of what should be expected from Web 2.0 and the future of the Internet. It offers us a taste of what is possible when (almost) everyone is forwarded the opportunity to input their knowledge into a system which records all human knowledge; in effect participating in a massive discussion about the truth of our collective histories, while at the same time debating with and educating each other. Through these platforms is the potential for history to be no longer written only by the winners.

New Media Audiences

The contemporary media environment has shifted dramatically in regards to the production, dissemination and reception of information. In terms of ‘audience’ media consumption, that shift has precipitated a move towards a complex mediascape where individuals now have a huge amount of influence over what media they engage with and when, or how often – in effect rendering them no longer ‘audiences’ but what Axel Bruns calls “prod-users”. Lievrouw and Livingstone address this shift from the perspective of traditional media modes of operation towards one where its focus is on ‘mediation’ – I will look at this in more detail in a future post.

With the arrival of new media technology, specifically the internet and the development of Web 2.0, people are now enabled and encouraged to seek out and furthermore question information in a much less traditional manner than before. This is through offering forums and spaces where public discussions and debates not only take place, but are also recorded in their entirety and displayed for anyone who is interested to see. This transparency is a vital key to the longevity of a system whose goals are to host and publish open discourses on just about every topic as it exemplifies the level of inclusion that applies to all users, not just the creators.

Charles Leadbetter identifies a growing social desire for explicit control over our own media diets. He summarises this social development:
In the we-think economy people don’t just want services and goods delivered to them. They also want tools so that they can take part in places in which to play share, debate with others.
Web 2.0 offers Internet users the facilities through which they are able to participate in a variety of online communities. Different platforms available through the Web 2.0 services vary according to user behaviour and expectations of that platform. For example, blogs are designed around contribution, of both the blog owner and its readership; social networks are designed to do exactly that: to network people, to connect them. Leadbetter states that “for sustained creative collaboration to take off” another tool is needed: at present that tool is the wiki. The power of the wiki lies in the power of the collective. What wiki’s allow, is for people to co-operate with the goal of “summaris[ing] a debate or amass[ing] a body of information and creat[ing] documents with a collective author.” This change in approach has seen massive growth with the arrival of Web 2.0 platforms; blogs, networking sites and, of course, Wikipedia. With Wikipedia, users are automatically placed in a position of authority, asserting this new produser approach for its users and enabling them to participate fully in the activities taking place within it.

The tone of the media is shifting (or has shifted, really) – people don’t like being told anymore, they want to find and then decide for themselves. They want to participate and engage and make sure that they are not being duped as a result of hidden interests. With this shift comes a changing face for ‘audiences’, one where they are respected for their individuality and knowledge and not talked at in ways which are designed to relieve them of their time and money.