A Spatial Narrative Analysis of the Collaborative Construction of City-Related Articles Within the User-Generated Encyclopaedia
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Multilingual Knowledge Production and Dissemination in Wikipedia: A spatial narrative analysis of the collaborative construction of city-related articles within the user-generated encyclopaedia A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2017 Henry A. Jones School of Arts, Languages and Cultures CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5 LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6 ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7 DECLARATION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8 COPYRIGHT STATEMENT……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8 NOTE ON HYPERLINKS………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 9 NOTE ON APPENDICES………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 10 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 12 1.1 INTRODUCING WIKIPEDIA ...................................................................................... 12 1.2 RESEARCH CONTEXT .............................................................................................. 17 1.3 WIKIPEDIA IN/AND TRANSLATION STUDIES RESEARCH ......................................... 21 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ........................................................................................... 30 1.5 OVERVIEW OF THESIS STRUCTURE ........................................................................ 32 2 SPACE AND SPATIALITY ................................................................................................... 35 2.1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 35 2.2 THE SPATIAL TURN ................................................................................................. 36 2.2.1 The rise and fall of ‘absolute space’ ............................................................... 36 2.2.2 The spatial turn in the context of wider societal change ............................... 39 2.3 TRANSLATION STUDIES AND THE SPATIAL TURN .................................................. 42 2.3.1 The geography of translation ......................................................................... 43 2.3.2 The translation of geographies ...................................................................... 46 2.4 HENRI LEFEBVRE .................................................................................................... 48 2.4.1 “L’espace (social) est un produit (social)” ...................................................... 48 2.4.2 Implications and applications ........................................................................ 51 2.4.3 Criticisms ........................................................................................................ 56 2.5 HETEROTOPIA ........................................................................................................ 58 2.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY .............................................................................................. 61 2 3 NARRATIVE AND NARRATIVITY ....................................................................................... 63 3.1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 63 3.2 NARRATIVE THEORY ............................................................................................... 64 3.3 APPLICATIONS OF NARRATIVE THEORY IN TRANSLATION STUDIES ...................... 67 3.4 TIME, SPACE AND NARRATIVE ............................................................................... 69 3.5 A TYPOLOGY OF SPATIAL NARRATIVES .................................................................. 73 3.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY .............................................................................................. 83 4 METHODOLOGY AND DATA SELECTION ......................................................................... 85 4.1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 85 4.2 METHODOLOGICAL POSSIBILITIES ......................................................................... 85 4.2.1 Reference Lists ............................................................................................... 87 4.2.2 Revision History archives ............................................................................... 91 4.2.3 Talk pages ....................................................................................................... 94 4.2.4 User Profile pages .......................................................................................... 95 4.2.5 Statistics engines ............................................................................................ 99 4.3 METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES ........................................................................ 101 4.3.1 Size ............................................................................................................... 101 4.3.2 Instability ...................................................................................................... 103 4.3.3 Ethics ............................................................................................................ 105 4.3.4 Hyperlinks .................................................................................................... 106 4.3.5 Translation ................................................................................................... 107 4.4 DATA SELECTION AND COLLECTION .................................................................... 108 4.5 CHAPTER SUMMARY ............................................................................................ 112 5 WIKIPEDIA AS SOCIAL SPACE ........................................................................................ 113 5.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 113 5.2 WIKIPEDIA AS CONCEIVED SPACE ........................................................................ 114 5.3 CORE GROUP ANALYSIS ....................................................................................... 118 5.3.1 Data .............................................................................................................. 118 5.3.2 Results from the English-language Wikipedia .............................................. 124 5.3.3 Results from the French-language Wikipedia .............................................. 128 5.4 REFERENCE LIST ANALYSIS ................................................................................... 132 5.4.1 Results from the English-language Wikipedia .............................................. 133 5.4.2 Results from the French-language Wikipedia .............................................. 139 5.5 USER COMMENTS ANALYSIS ................................................................................ 147 3 5.5.1 Availability, currency and accuracy .............................................................. 147 5.5.2 Authority and impartiality ............................................................................ 151 5.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY ............................................................................................ 153 6 ‘NOT-SO-COLLABORATIVE’ COLLABORATION ............................................................... 155 6.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 155 6.2 WIKIPEDIA AS A SPACE FOR THE PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION OF EXPERTISE ......................................................................................................................... 156 6.2.1 “Tokyo is not a city” ..................................................................................... 160 6.2.2 Originality and difference ............................................................................ 166 6.3 WIKIPEDIA AS A GLOBAL/LOCAL SPACE ……………………………………………………….. 173 6.4 WIKIPEDIA AS NEUTRAL/OCCUPIED TERRITORY .................................................. 184 6.4.1 What’s in a name? ....................................................................................... 185 6.4.2 Rival etymologies ......................................................................................... 189 6.5 (CON)FUSION ....................................................................................................... 194 6.5.1 Bombay or Mumbai?.................................................................................... 195 6.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY ............................................................................................ 201 7 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 202 7.1 EXTENDING TRANSLATION ................................................................................... 202 7.2 REFLECTIONS ON THE CHOICE OF DATASET ........................................................ 208 7.3 CLOSING REMARKS .............................................................................................. 211 8 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................. 213 8.1 CORE DATASET ..................................................................................................... 213 8.2 ADDITIONAL PRIMARY SOURCES ........................................................................