Calendars:Networked Media Calendar/Networked Media Calendar/09-04-2015 -Event 3

18h00-19h00: Presentation by Dorothy Howard in the lg project space

Description:
Crowdsourced production has allowed for encyclopedic web content– like Wikipedia to ebb into more opaque consumer markets and niches, far surpassing what was possible by print predecessors. But with all this new content comes the necessity for the maintenance, info-curating, and fact-checking that have become increasingly shared collective and social burdens. This talk will explore how Wikipedia editing can be contextualized within the discourses of digital labor / info-labor / knowledge-production, and consider how Wikipedia's underlying ethics might need to change to alleviate the exploitation of unpaid knowledge workers. The talk will touch on the motivations of Wikipedia editors, where peer reinforcement is the main motivator of contribution, rather than financial gain, and discuss whether this is a truly fair exchange. The talk will also touch as on how leisure inequality, online harassment and gender / multicultural discrimination in online communities has also created a high barrier for entry into Wikipedia amongst already less digitally advantaged populations.

Bio:
Dorothy Howard is a writer and technologist whose work has appeared in Dis Magazine and the New Inquiry. She admins the Facebook group Immaterial Digital labor.