Abstract

ALONSO-JIMENEZ, Elisa. An approach to Wikipedia as a cultural polysystem. Convergencia [online]. 2015, vol.22, n.68, pp.125-149. ISSN 2448-5799.

This qualitative and interpretative work aims at approaching Wikipedia's cultural facet from a transdisciplinary view. For this purpose, we set to analyse the existing literature that has dealt with Wikipedia in the generic media and in academic publications on the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Information and Education Sciences and Translation Studies as well. In these works -mostly with a descriptive, empirical or pragmatic approach- Wikipedia is referred to as an online collaborative encyclopaedia that incorporates innovation and content creation devices from the free software movement. Our proposal calls for resorting to theoretical works envisaging Wikipedia's cultural dimension. With a semiotic approach, we have based our analysis hypothesis on the social imaginary proposed by Vázquez Medel, as well as on the Polysystem Theory written by Even-Zohar. We will outline that these authors provide many clues for approaching Wikipedia as a cultural system boasting as a repository of knowledge and human relationships.

Keywords : Wikipedia; culture; media; information society; free software.

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