Adieu French: comparing English and French Wikipedias

The English and French Wikipedias are the world's first and third largest versions of the encyclopedia (containing 3.9 and 1.3 million articles respectively).   

I thought that it might be instructive to compare the geographic coverage of the two. Even though there is three times as much content in English than French, one might assume that there are plenty of parts of the world in which people are more likely to annotate or augment space with French content. 

The results are contained in the map below:

We ultimately see only a few countries in which there is more French content: France (of course), Belgium, Luxembourg, the Francophone parts of the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia), the DRC, Senegal, and surprisingly Bosnia, Montenegro, and Kosovo.

You would expect the first eight countries on the list to have more French content than English, but there seems to be no obvious reason why Bosnia, Montenegro, and Kosovo have more French-language information about them. Then again, there is not necessarily a reason why there should be more English-language content in every other country in which neither French nor English is the primary language spoken.

Also interesting is that much of the rest of the Francophone world has more English-language content then French. Madagascar, Haiti, Cameroon, Mali etc. all have more written about them in English than French.

What does this map tell us? We know that the number of Wikipedia articles about a place isn't necessarily a great proxy for broader social or cultural relationships and patterns (e.g. the example of the heavy focus on Turkey in the Swahili Wikipedia). But perhaps these patterns of attention do still tell us something about the importance of English vs. French in some of these places. Rwanda, for instance, has more English-language content: a fact that reflects the country's shift into the Anglophone sphere.

Perhaps in much of the rest of the Francophone world we are also seeing a similar (although likely less-pronounced) shift towards use of English as a means of non-local communication and local representation to a broader audience.

I'd welcome any further thoughts or questions....

(for more information about this work, have a look at the other blog posts I've written about the geographies of Wikipedia)

New paper - "Thai Silk dot Com: Authenticity, Altruism, Modernity and Markets in the Thai Silk Industry"

I've just had a paper accepted to Globalizations: 

Graham, M. (2013) Thai Silk dot Com: Authenticity, Altruism, Modernity and Markets in the Thai Silk Industry. Globalizations 10(2).

The abstract is below and you can download a pre-publication version here.

The production of silk occupies a unique place in Thai cultural and economic practices. However, the practice is rarely passed on to the younger generation and is widely considered to be a dying craft. In response, influential organizations have proposed use of the internet as a way to reinvigorate the industry and attract new customers. This paper looks at the discourses used to sell silk and the ways that sellers are either framing Thai silk as a traditional craft in need of saving or as an enterprise that efficiently engage with the commercial needs of the global economy. The paper reviews the range of, often problematic, emotions, images and associations used to sell a dying craft. Ultimately, it argues that, in contrast to many of the theorized effects of the internet, it seems to be neither encouraging a mass homogenization or pushing sellers to effectively integrate themselves into global markets.

And a few random pictures from my fieldwork in Thailand: 

Mapping Wikipedia edits from Europe

I'm still playing with our database of Wikipedia edits (which tells us how many contributions to the encyclopedia originate in each country) and made two more maps of Europe. The height of each country represents the number of edits originating in that place. The shading indicated the number of edits per Internet user (darker reds meaning higher per capita participation). 

We see that the majority of edits in Europe come from Germany, the UK, France and Italy. Other countries in Europe contribute far less to Wikipedia.

Interestingly though, Germany and UK have fairly low participation rates when normalised by Internet population. Internet users in Italy, Scandinavia, the Baltic States, and even Ukraine are more likely to make an edit to Wikipedia than their British or German counterparts.

Also notable are the relatively low (total and relative) participation rates from Portugal and Poland.

If you're interested in Wikipedia edit data, take a look at the other regional maps that I've made:
Middle East and North Africa
South America
Africa
Global

Hiring a part-time research assistant to do statistical, spatial, and social analysis

Bernie Hogan and I are hiring a part-time Research Assistant to carry out research into the geography and social structure of Wikipedia in the Middle East and North Africa through large-scale data analysis. The position will involve the analysis of the corpus of Wikipedia text, user-pages and history files and the use of statistical techniques to explain spatial and social patterns. Our research question focuses on patterns of representation on Wikipedia as well as an articulation of patterns of conflict and barriers to participation.

The successful candidate will manage and perform queries on a large database, statistically and geographically analyse and visualise results, explore alternate methods to answer the project's core research questions, and assist in writing academic papers and technical reports.

Essential attributes:
• A graduate degree or postgraduate training in quantitative social science. Preference will be given to candidates in geography or sociology;
• Experience with statistical modeling, particularly regression analysis;
• Experience working with databases and large datasets (i.e. N > 1 million);
• Familiarity with GIS software;
• Familiarity with social network analysis software;
• Ability to work autonomously and be creative in the ways that you answer research questions.

Desirable attributes: 
• Experience visualising statistical, social networks and geographic data;
• Experience with text mining;
• Experience writing for an academic audience (i.e. journal articles and book chapters);
• Interest in and enthusiasm for the work of the OII;
• Experience working with publicly available secondary datasets.

The deadline for applications is June 1. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

(link to apply is here)

Links to our relevant Wikipedia projects:
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=66
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=70

Random map from the project:

Augmented information and the reproduction of visibility

I spend a lot of time thinking about the geographies of information that augment our planet (e.g. see a paper on augmented realities and uneven geographies that I recently wrote with Matt Zook). And many people ask me why the layers of information about place really matter. Who cares if London is covered by a denser cloud of information than Lagos? Why does it matter if some places are digitally mirrored by content that omits the voices of women, minorities, the oppressed, the invisible? Why do these augmentations really matter?

It is sometimes hard to come up with tangible examples of how the layers of information over place do truly matter. So, I want to share a quick story from an interview that I conducted in Kenya last week as part of our project about how altered communications capabilities are changing East Africa. A travel agent in Nairobi was telling me how the faster internet that he now has allows him to offer more regional tours to nearby countries like Rwanda and Uganda.

I then asked for more details about what this specifically meant. What is it that he is doing now that he couldn't before. The answer was 'Googling many more things - faster - more efficiently.' But I pressed the issue, what did this mean? What information was Google giving him that allowed him to learn more about new places and offer them as destinations to his clients. Well, the answer was actually Wikipedia. Google would lead him to relevant Wikipedia articles, and he would read about national parks, adventure activities and a range of other sights and then relay that information to his customers.

This may seem like a relatively trivial or uninteresting story. However, I think it nicely illustrates how geographic representations don't just influence how we think about places, but also, in a very real sense, influence how we move through, interact with, and enact place. 

(we also have a second paper on augmented realities that expands on some of these themes in more detail. I'd be happy to share a pre-publication draft if you'd like to get in touch)