The Political Economy of Wikiality: a South African Inquiry Into Knowledge and Power on Wikipediatown
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The Political Economy of Wikiality: A South African Inquiry into Knowledge and Power on WikipediaTown Håvard Ovesen OVSHAV001 Cape A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirementsof for the award of the degree of Master of Arts in Media Studies Centre for Film and Media Studies Faculty of the Humanities University of Cape Town University 2014 COMPULSORY DECLARATION This work has not been previously submitted in whole, or in part, for the award of any degree. It is my own work. Each significant contribution to, and quotation in, this dissertation from the work, or works, of other people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced. Signature: Date: The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to express my deep gratitude toward my hard-working supervisor, Associate Professor Adam Haupt. To enjoy his support, guidance, inspiration, and friendship is a privilege for which I will always be grateful. I also want to thank everybody at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies for everything I have learnt and all the opportunities I have been given. To Saif Islam, Wondimu Ketsela, Dustin Kramer, Mareike Kramper, Ayanda Manqoyi, Musawenkosi Ndlovu, Torgeir Uberg Nærland, and Ashleigh Searle I am grateful for coffee, comradeship, and stimulating conversations. I want to thank my parents, Gerd Karin and Egil Øivind Ovesen, for raising me well and for their support and unwavering belief in me. Lastly, no words can ever express how I feel about my beloved family. I dedicate this work to Qenehelo Leuta and Odin Thabo Leuta Ovesen. Without you, I am nothing. ABSTRACT This dissertation explores how knowledge construction on the English-language Wikipedia produces hegemonic representations of South Africa. Using Wikipedia’s entries on Cape Town and various places in the Free State province as case studies, this dissertation demonstrates through critical discourse analysis that there is a systematic marginalisation, underrepresentation, and decontextualisation of ‘black’ working class communities and spaces, which echoes their historical marginalisation. This representation is contextualised through a historical narrative of Cape Town and the Free State, and explored against a theoretical background which, borrowing from Foucault, Castells, and others, sees the social construction of knowledge as an expression of power, and the networked society as an arena for the dynamics of hegemony. While Wikipedia is often hailed as a game-changer, the knowledge it produces tends to replicate and, thanks to its ever-increasing reach, further entrench hegemonic explanations of society. This might seem counter-intuitive given its credentials as a democratiser of knowledge, but can be explained with Wikipedia’s architecture, which ultimately rests upon a regime of truth established during the Enlightenment. The online encyclopedia relies on well-established institutions and discourses of knowledge as sources of its content, and these, coupled with its particular preferences for some sources and topics over others, give it a particular slant in favour of the hegemonic status quo. The discourse it produces is given further gravitas and is naturalised through an insistence upon the knowledge it presents as ‘neutral’. Studies have shown that Wikipedia’s values are defined by its established community of editors and that, even as Wikipedia’s reach is extending, it is increasingly difficult for new users to impact upon the online encyclopedia. Arguably it is rather the encyclopedia which impacts upon them by circulating seemingly uncontested representations of their communities, or, alternatively, simply ignoring the communities altogether. In a process I have, borrowing from American political satirist Stephen Colbert, termed wikiality, hegemonic representations have a tendency of becoming true when we act upon them as such. Thus, when certain communities are presented as marginal or unimportant, it becomes even more difficult for them to break out of this mould. Meaningful participation on Wikipedia can only be achieved if the user not only has access to relevant technological capital, but also the cultural capital required to make contributions which appeal to the established core of editors. In South Africa, as a result of its political economy, large parts of the population are politically, economically, and socially marginalised. This also means that they lack the cultural capital necessary to make meaningful contributions to Wikipedia. This tends to render them the subjects of Wikipedia entries, rather than their authors, which contributes to their further marginalisation. The key to understanding the relationship between knowledge and power on Wikipedia lies in the ability of some users to capture and define reality through representation and thereby effectuating it. Reducing this imbalance to a simple question of access downplays the social, economic, and political factors which created it in the first place, and accommodates discursive practices which downplay difference and perpetuate hegemony. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 ABSTRACT 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 INTRODUCTION 5 CHAPTER ONE: A SHORT HISTORY OF WIKIPEDIA 10 Wiki 13 Wikipedia 14 The Network Effect 20 Wikipedia’s Nuts and Bolts 23 Barriers to participation 27 Conclusion 32 CHAPTER TWO: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WIKIALITY 34 Castells, Wikipedia, and network power 35 Marx, Gramsci, and Wikipedia 39 Foucault and the political economy of truth 41 Economic and political demand for knowledge: Orientalism 43 The Enlightenment 46 Critical discourse analysis 48 A quick note about ‘race’ 52 Conclusion 54 CHAPTER THREE: CROWDED OUT OF CAPE TOWN 55 Crowded out of [[Cape Town]] 56 2001 Census figures 57 The roots of segregation in South Africa 61 Cape Town’s uneasy relationship with migrant labour 62 The History of Langa 64 A place for Others 66 [[Cape Town]] versus [[City of Cape Town]] 67 [[Cape Town]]’s discourse at a glance 69 Conclusion 75 CHAPTER FOUR: CROWED OUT OF THE FREE STATE 79 3 A Short History of the Free State 80 Matjhabeng Local Municipality 89 Main places of interest in the Free State 95 Conclusion 97 CONCLUSION 101 BIBLIOGRAPHY 107 Books 107 Chapters in Books 108 Journal articles and conference papers 109 Online papers 113 Newspaper articles and other internet resources 113 Legislation 116 Video resources 117 Other 117 4 INTRODUCTION This thesis is about power and representation on Wikipedia. Through exploring the collaboratively written encyclopedia’s articles on Cape Town as well as those covering main places in the Free State province, using Matjhabeng Local Municipality as a focal point, I show how ‘black’ localities in South Africa are systematically marginalised on Wikipedia. This marginalisation is not unique to Wikipedia, but mirrors the economic, political, and cultural marginalisation of the same communities in everyday life. The two are connected. The knowledge constructed on Wikipedia is a product of power relations and struggles over discourse, both internal and external to the online encyclopedia. The situation is compounded by the many thoroughly depoliticised portraits of the Wikipedia process as unburdened by hierarchy – separate from market forces, politics, and traditions- making it appear as if knowledge presented on Wikipedia is somehow ‘neutral’, ‘given’, or ‘natural’, completely divorced from the situation which produced it. It is this portrayal and the process leading up to it that constitutes what I have termed the political economy of wikiality, a concept I outline in chapter two. The political economy part comes from Michel Foucault who outlines a “political economy of truth” (1980: 132), a reference to how our knowledge is not an undisputable given, but a social construction operating in favour of the status quo. This social construct is shaped by a range of factors and regulates how we think about things and act upon them. The term ‘wikiality’ is taken from the American TV comedian Stephen Colbert, and refers to how the ‘real’ world is represented on Wikipedia, and the dissonance between the two. Colbert’s wikiality also connotes a process: socially constructed knowledge eventually becomes ‘true’ when we act upon it as such. This is why the marginalisation of ‘black’ South African localities on Wikipedia is important. Too often are ‘openness’, ‘Web 2.0’, and ‘the information economy’ touted as a panacea for the developing world, a shortcut to levelling the gap separating the haves from the have-nots, the connected from the disconnected. Recently, an open letter to South Africa’s four cell phone networks from a Grade 11 class at the Sinenjongo High School in Cape Town’s impoverished Joe Slovo Park triggered wide interest in South Africa (Alfreds, 2012: online; Klee, 2013: online; Times LIVE, 2013: online). The open letter was later followed up with a change.org petition accompanied by a YouTube video produced by the Wikimedia Foundation. The letter noted that Sinenjongo High School does not have a school library and provides little to no access to computers, that the severely under-resourced local library is far away, and that accessing the internet