Paper Short Abstract:

Based on ethnography, this paper analyses how Wikipedia editors perceive knowledge co-production and open-source software as resources to oppose datafied capitalism and the neoliberal obstacles posed by unaffordable learning materials, presenting technology as a controversial anti-capitalist tool.

Paper Abstract:

As ‘the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit’, Wikipedia draws on relinquishing the requirement for expertise: the freedom granted to any internet user to edit Wikipedia articles is meant to challenge the hegemony of the intellectual elites over knowledge production, thus democratising and freeing knowledge. Similarly, Wikipedia presents its open-source wiki software as the result of open collaboration, detached from the ‘black box’ functioning of commercial platforms. Such discourses inform the practices of Wikipedia editors, who engage with this encyclopedia as a collaborative space co-constructed and run by humans, free from the intervention of algorithms, AI and the dangers of datafication. Against this background, this paper asks: how do technologies (such as open-source software and ‘the internet’ more broadly) emerge as neoliberal-laden tools set to address neoliberal problems?

Grounded on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted on Wikipedia in 2022-2024, this paper argues for the use of technoliberal participation as a framework to better understand both datafied capitalism and certain forms of opposing it. While the Big Techs are driven by a combination of distrust of vertical authority and faith in the transformative power of technology (Malaby 2009, Pfister and Yang 2012), these dispositions nurturing the for-profit digital economy also seem to feed the practices of Wikipedia editors, FOSS activists and hackers, who use technology to oppose private property, maximise freedom of expression and experiment with direct democracy. Additionally, I take the assumed openness and transparency of Wikipedia’s infrastructure as an entryway to discuss the practicalities and ethics of online ethnography.