Indian language Wikipedia editors, dubbed “Wiki Warriors,” employed decolonialist practices during the Covid-19 pandemic, challenging digital colonialism and promoting localized health information.
Authors
Bunty Avieson, University of Sydney, Australia
Suruchi Mazumdar, Associate Professor, Jindal School of Journalism and Communication, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India
Summary
The volunteerism of Wikipedia editors has been conceptualised as an altruistic form of social production and a form of social activism. However, notions of linguistic activism and cultural identity as motivators, and the ways in which editors representing the Global South have sought to counter knowledge inequities online, have not been addressed. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of digital colonialism and social justice; a grounded theory approach that included semi-structured interviews with prominent editors; and digital data analysis from Wikipedia, we present a culturally situated case study of Indian language Wikipedia editors during the Covid-19 pandemic.
We identify them as ‘Wiki Warriors’ and offer their motivations and work practices as instructive for rethinking assumptions about digital colonialism. We find that during the urgency of the global health crisis, the editors in the Global South developed a range of decolonialist practices as they negotiated the tensions of western medicine and traditional non-Western healing systems, such as Ayurveda and Unnani, ‘universal’ facts, and the spreadability of vernacular, localised health information in the digital space. Such decolonialist strategies were shaped by the responses towards religious disharmony and misinformation.
Published in: Asian Journal of Communication
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