Ideological Segregation Among Online Collaborators: Evidence from Wikipedians
49 Pages
Posted: 14 Oct 2016
Last revised: 17 Mar 2017
Harvard University - Technology & Operations Management Unit; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Harvard Business School
Harvard University - Harvard Business School
There are 2 versions of this paper
Date Written: March 14, 2017
Abstract
Do online communities segregate into separate conversations about “contestable knowledge”? We analyze the contributors of biased and slanted content in Wikipedia articles about U.S. politics, and focus on two research questions: (1) Do contributors display tendencies to contribute to topics with similar or opposing bias and slant? (2) Do contributors learn from experience with extreme or neutral content, and does that experience change the slant and bias of their contributions over time? Despite heterogeneity in contributors and their contributions, we find an overall trend towards less segregated conversations. Contributors tend to edit articles with slants that are the opposite of their own views, and the slant from experienced contributors becomes less extreme over time. The experienced contributors with the most extreme biases decline the most. We also find some significant differences between Republicans and Democrats.
Suggested Citation:
Suggested Citation
Greenstein, Shane M. and Gu, Yuan and Zhu, Feng, Ideological Segregation Among Online Collaborators: Evidence from Wikipedians (March 14, 2017). Harvard Business School Technology & Operations Mgt. Unit Working Paper No. 17-028. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2851934 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2851934
