Two Wikipedias in Bhutan: problems and solutions for knowledge equity in the digital age

Abstract

ABSTRACT The growing influence of English Wikipedia as a provider of information has created powerful new gatekeepers and publishing practices that determine not only what constitutes knowledge in the online world, but whose knowledge is privileged. The structural inequalities of the offline world are being reproduced online, creating new sites for information imperialism. Research shows western contributors are overwriting local knowledge, perpetuating western narratives, and presenting cultures through an outsider lens, resulting in subtle and not so subtle forms of hegemonic cultural dominance. Nonetheless, Wikipedias have multi-media capabilities, which can be utilized by oral cultures as well as providing new asynchronous online meeting places where communities can continue their social imaginings. This paper considers the impacts of English Wikipedia on global knowledge equity and cognitive justice. It analyzes two articles about Bhutanese culture to demonstrate the risks of dilution brought by western ontological expansiveness, and argues that, by contrast, the Dzongkha Wikipedia offers an online space mostly inaccessible to outsiders, and thus a bulwark where the community can continue its cultural conversations in ways not possible before Web 2.0 technologies.