Dozens of books about Wikipedia are available, but they all focus on the English Wikipedia and assume an Anglo-Saxon perspective, while disregarding cultural and language variability or multi-cultural collaborative efforts. They address the impact of Wikipedia on society, processes of mass knowledge production, and the dynamics of the Wikipedia community. However, none of them focus on Wikipedia s global features. This lack of attention presents a serious problem because more than 80% of Wikipedia articles are written in languages other than English---in fact, Wikipedia includes articles in 285 languages. Global Wikipedia: International and Cross-Cultural Issues in Online Collaboration is the first book to address this gap by focusing attention on the global, multilingual, and multicultural aspects of Wikipedia. The editors showcase research on Wikipedia, exploring a wide range of international and cross-cultural issues. Online global collaboration, coordination, and conflict management are examined in this rich socio technical environment. Special emphases include .International and cross-cultural collaboration; .Intercultural synergy on Wikimedia; .Conflict and collaboration in editing international entries; .Case studies of Chinese, Finnish, French, and Greek Wikipedias; and, .Cross-cultural studies that compare more than one Wikipedia, focusing on content, structures, policies, contributions, interactions, processes, motivations, and challenges."

This book takes a holistic view of the roles of ICTs during the pandemic through the lens of social informatics, as it is critical to our understanding of the relations between society and technology. Specific attention is given to various stakeholders and social contexts, with analysis at the individual, group, community, and society levels. Pushing the boundaries of information science research with timely and critical research questions, this edited volume showcases information science research in the context of COVID-19, by specifically accentuating sociotechnical practices, activities, and ICT interventions during the pandemic. Its social informatics focus appeals to a broad audience, and its global and international orientation provides a timely, innovative, and much-needed perspective to information science. This book is unique in its interdisciplinary nature as it consists of research studies on the intersections between ICTs and health, culture, social interaction, civic engagement, information dissemination, work, and education. Chapters apply a range of research methods, including questionnaire surveys, content analyses, and case studies from countries in Asia, Europe, and America, as well as global and international comparisons. The book's primary target audience includes scholars and students in information and library science, particularly those interested in the social aspect of the information society. It may be of interest to information professionals, library practitioners, educators, and information policymakers, as well as scholars and students in science and technology studies, cultural studies, political science, public administration, sociology, and communication studies.

The study of people, information, and communication technologies and the contexts in which these technologies are designed, implemented, and used has long interested scholars in a wide range of disciplines, including the social study of computing, science and technology studies, the sociology of technology, and management information systems. As ICT use has spread from organizations into the larger world, these devices have become routine information appliances in our social lives, researchers have begun to ask deeper and more profound questions about how our lives have become bound up with technologies. A common theme running through this research is that the relationships among people, technology, and context are dynamic, complex, and critically important to understand. This book explores social informatics (SI), one important and dynamic approach that researchers have used to study these complex relationships. SI is "the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technology that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts" (Kling 1998, p. 52; 1999). SI provides flexible frameworks to explore complex and dynamic socio-technical interactions. As a domain of study related largely by common vocabulary and conclusions, SI critically examines common conceptions of and expectations for technology, by providing contextual evidence. This book describes the evolution of SI research and identifies challenges and opportunities for future research. In what might be seen as an example of socio-technical "natural selection," SI emerged in six different locations during the 1980s and 1990s: Norway, Slovenia, Japan, the former Soviet Union, the UK and, last, the U.S. As SI evolved, the version popularized in the US became globally dominant. The evolution of SI is presented in five stages: emergence, foundational, expansion, coherence, and transformation. Thus, we divide SI research into five major periods: an emergence stage, when various forms of SI emerged around the globe, an early period of foundational work which grounds SI (Pre-1990s), a period of expansion (1990s), a robust period of coherence and influence by Rob Kling (2000-2005), and a period of transformation (2006-present). Following the description of the five periods we discuss the evolution throughout the periods under five sections: principles, concepts, approaches, topics, and findings. Principles refer to the overarching motivations and labels employed to describe scholarly work. Approaches describe the theories, frameworks, and models employed in analysis, emphasizing the multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of SI. Concepts include specific processes, entities, themes, and elements of discourse within a given context, revealing a shared SI language surrounding change, complexity, consequences, and social elements of technology. Topics label the issues and general domains studied within social informatics, ranging from scholarly communication to online communities to information systems. Findings from seminal SI works illustrate growing insights over time and demonstrate how repeatable explanations unify SI. In the concluding remarks, we raise questions about the possible futures of SI research.

Research on multiculturalism and information and communication technology (ICT) has been important to understanding recent history, planning for future large-scale initiatives, and understanding unrealized expectations for social and technological change. This interdisciplinary area of research has examined interactions between ICT and culture at the group and society levels. However, there is debate within the literature as to the nature of the relationship between culture and technology. In this synthesis, we suggest that the tensions result from the competing ideologies that drive researchers, allowing us to conceptualize the relationship between culture and ICT under three primary models, each with its own assumptions: 1) Social informatics, 2) Social determinism, and 3) Technological determinism. Social informatics views the relationship to be one of sociotechnical interaction, in which culture and ICTs affect each other mutually and iteratively, rather than linearly; the vast majority of the literature approach the relationships between ICT and culture under the assumptions of social informatics. From a socially deterministic perspective, ICTs are viewed as the dependent variable in the equation, whereas, from a technologically deterministic perspective, ICTs are an independent variable. The issues of multiculturalism and ICTs attracted much scholarly attention and have been explored under a myriad of contexts, with substantial literature on global development, social and political issues, business and public administration as well as education and scholarly collaboration. We synthesize here research in the areas of global development, social and political issues, and business collaboration. Finally we conclude by proposing under-explored areas for future research directions.