Representing Metro Manila on Wikipedia
| Published date | 12 February 2018 |
| Date | 12 February 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-10-2016-0308 |
| Pages | 16-27 |
| Author | Brendan Luyt |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Representing Metro Manila
on Wikipedia
Brendan Luyt
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
Abstract
Purpose –The advent and wide use of new digital technologies suggests that the internet is becoming a
powerful new media for the imagination of city space. If this is the case then issues concerning urban
representation on social media platforms such as Wikipedia provide an area of overlap and interest between
urban studies and information studies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the representation of Manila,
Philippines, one of the world’s major mega cities, on the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
Design/methodology/approach –The author’s broad approach to the study of Wikipedia is qualitative in
nature. For this study the entire Metro Manila article was downloaded on March 16, 2015 and subjected to
textual analysis.
Findings –While the Wikipedia article on Manila cannot be classified as promotional,it is clear that much of
the city remains invisible in this work. Such a puzzle becomes understandable when we examine the urban
studies literature where we find that the spatial logic of the city itself helps conceal much from view, so that
what we read on Wikipedia is a view from the islands of privilege rather than the oceans of marginalization
that make up much of the city’s spatial form. If such a spatial structure is to change, representations such as
found on Wikipedia need to be challenged.
Originality/value –Wikipedia is a key element of today’s information infrastructure yet despite its
importance it remains relatively understudied within the field of information science. More specifically, the
role of Wikipedia in representing cities, the dominant settlement form in the world today, has not been
previously studied.
Keywords Philippines, Asia, Wikipedia, Cities, Urban representation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In a recent article Wolfgang Stock rhetorically asks what links does city research and
information science share? He answers “nothing at first sight,”but goes on to show that one
area of overlap revolves around the notion of the informational city (Stock, 2011).
Jessa Lingel (2015) provides another point of intersection in her study of how migrants
engage in information practices to familiarize themselves with New York City, directing her
work “both at library and information science (LIS) scholarship in transnational experience
and urban informatics as an area of study”(p. 1239). I wish in this paper to add another area
of potential intersection: the representation of cities in the era of social media.
Urban theorists have for some time viewed the city as a space constructed not only
geographically or materially, but through the social imagination of its inhabitants and
visitors. For James Donald (1992), “the city constitutes an imagined environment”(p. 422)
while Rob Shields (1996) tells us that “the notion of the ‘the city,’the city itself, is a
representation”(p. 227). As entities possessing constructive force, representations of cities
therefore have consequences. Sharon Zukin et al. (1998), for example, examine the histories
of Las Vegas and Coney Island in the USA to build an argument that the representations of
these urban spaces are equally responsible for producing the contrasts in their current
fortunes. A similar view is held by Richardson and Jens (2003) who develop “a sociology of
space”based on “the dialectical relations between material practices and the symbolic
meanings that social agents attach to their environments”(p. 8).
The production and dissemination of representations is the job of various forms of media
and media organizations (Greenberg, 2000). Today the internet, that amorphous network
Online Information Review
Vol. 42 No. 1, 2018
pp. 16-27
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-10-2016-0308
Received 24 October 2016
Revised 16 May 2017
Accepted 1 June 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
16
OIR
42,1
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