2014
Politecnico di Milano
School of Design
Communication Design
Master's Degree Thesis
Master's Degree Thesis
In this book is described the theoric context in which I realized my thesis project "Visualizing controversies in Wikipedia".
First of all, I deepened the origin and history of Wikipedia, its structures and guideline policies and all the dynamics involved in content creation in this platform. Thanks to its increased popularity and relevance as a new form of knowledge generated by its users, but also to its fully accessible database, Wikipedia has received much attention in the last years from the scientific and academic community. The starting point of my research was thus the collection and the categorization of all the studies which addressed Wikipedia data analysis and visualization. Some researchers investigated pages growth rate, others the motivation and quality of users’ contribution, while others the ways in which users collaborate to build the article contents. A group of the considered studies also focused on conflict and controversy detection in Wikipedia rather than on consensus and agreement.
In the second part of the book, instead, is described the experimental and creative process of data visualization based on the case study of "Family planning" page of the English version of Wikipedia. Here is presented an introduction of the subject of the research, the explanation of the application of cartography of controversies on the web with the aid of digital methods. In the end, the results and the research methods of the study are showed and discussed together with the analysis of the role of the designer in this process.
In the second part of the book, instead, is described the experimental and creative process of data visualization based on the case study of "Family planning" page of the English version of Wikipedia. Here is presented an introduction of the subject of the research, the explanation of the application of cartography of controversies on the web with the aid of digital methods. In the end, the results and the research methods of the study are showed and discussed together with the analysis of the role of the designer in this process.
Projected developed in collaboration with Density Design Research Lab, MédiaLab of Science Po and the World Health Organization.
