TY - JOUR
T1 - Poor attention
T2 - The wealth and regional gaps in event attention and coverage on Wikipedia
AU - Ruprechter, Thorsten
AU - Burghardt, Keith
AU - Helic, Denis
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2023 Ruprechter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2023/11
Y1 - 2023/11
N2 - Wikipedia is an important source of general knowledge covering a wide range of topics. Moreover, for many people around the world, it also serves as an essential news source for major events such as elections or disasters. Although Wikipedia covers many such events, some events are underrepresented and lack attention, despite their newsworthiness predicted from news value theory. In this paper, we analyze 17 490 event articles in four Wikipedia language editions and examine how the economic status and geographic region of the event location affects the attention and coverage it receives. We find that major Wikipedia language editions have a skewed focus, with more attention given to events in the world’s more economically developed countries and less attention to events in less affluent regions. However, other factors, such as the number of deaths in a disaster, are also associated with the attention an event receives. Overall, this work provides a nuanced understanding of attention and coverage on Wikipedia through event articles and adds new empirical analysis to news value theory.
AB - Wikipedia is an important source of general knowledge covering a wide range of topics. Moreover, for many people around the world, it also serves as an essential news source for major events such as elections or disasters. Although Wikipedia covers many such events, some events are underrepresented and lack attention, despite their newsworthiness predicted from news value theory. In this paper, we analyze 17 490 event articles in four Wikipedia language editions and examine how the economic status and geographic region of the event location affects the attention and coverage it receives. We find that major Wikipedia language editions have a skewed focus, with more attention given to events in the world’s more economically developed countries and less attention to events in less affluent regions. However, other factors, such as the number of deaths in a disaster, are also associated with the attention an event receives. Overall, this work provides a nuanced understanding of attention and coverage on Wikipedia through event articles and adds new empirical analysis to news value theory.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85176437121&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0289325
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0289325
M3 - Article
C2 - 37939022
AN - SCOPUS:85176437121
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 11
M1 - e0289325
ER -