Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics
  4. Online First Articles
  5. Online First Article
image of Not all Wikipedias are the same: The Italian Wikipedia’s unique approach to the Ukrainian war

Abstract

This article investigates the delayed publication of the Italian Wikipedia entry on the Russian–Ukrainian war. While most language versions of Wikipedia promptly published articles on the conflict, the Italian version exhibited a notable delay. This study explores the reasons behind this delay, revealing that it was not driven by political pressures but rather by a distinct editorial philosophy within the Italian Wikipedia community. Unlike other language versions, Italian Wikipedia editors uphold a more conservative interpretation of what is appropriate for an encyclopaedia, favouring stability and verification over immediacy. Through a qualitative analysis of talk pages and sixteen semi-structured interviews with editors, this research highlights how these editorial norms shaped the approach to covering the war. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of how different Wikipedia communities negotiate knowledge production, emphasizing the role of cultural and epistemic values in shaping collaborative digital platforms.

© 2025 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/macp_00099_1
2025-10-31
2026-01-24
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. 2A01:4C8:1C80:1FDC:DD75:8B86:94EB:DAB1 (2022), ‘Comment: Invasione russa dell’Ucraina del 2022’, Wikipedia, 20 May, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Invasione_russa_dell%27Ucraina_del_2022. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  2. Agilix (2022), ‘Comment: Invasione russa dell’Ucraina del 2022’, Wikipedia, 16 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Invasione_russa_dell%27Ucraina_del_2022. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  3. Al-Shehari, K. and Al-Sharafi, A. G. (2022), ‘Negotiating Wikipedia narratives about the Yemeni crisis: Who are the alleged supporters of the Houthis?’, Media, War & Conflict, 15:2, pp. 183–201, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635220938404.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Antenor81 (2022), ‘Comment: Invasione russa dell’Ucraina del 2022’, Wikipedia, 13 February, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Invasione_russa_dell%27Ucraina_del_2022. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  5. Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006), ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3:2, pp. 77–101, https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Brinkmann, S. (2013), Qualitative Interviewing: Understanding Qualitative Research, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Burke, P. (2012), A Social History of Knowledge, Volume II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia, Cambridge: Polity Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Con (2022), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 16 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  9. Consensus (2022), ‘Comment: Invasione russa dell’Ucraina del 2022’, Wikipedia, 16 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Invasione_russa_dell%27Ucraina_del_2022. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  10. Entman, R. (1993), ‘Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm’, Journal of Communication, 43:4, pp. 51–58, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Ferron, M. and Massa, P. (2011), ‘WikiRevolutions: Wikipedia as a lens for studying the real-time formation of collective memories of revolutions’, International Journal of Communication, 5, pp. 1313–32.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Ford, H. and Wajcman, J. (2017), ‘“Anyone can edit”, not everyone does: Wikipedia and the gender gap’, Social Studies of Science, 47:4, pp. 511–27, https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312717692172.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Franzk (2022), ‘Comment: Invasione russa dell’Ucraina del 2022’, Wikipedia, 11 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Invasione_russa_dell%27Ucraina_del_2022. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  14. Fullerton, L. and Ettema, J. (2014), ‘Ways of worldmaking in Wikipedia: Reality, legitimacy and collaborative knowledge making’, Media, Culture & Society, 36:2, pp. 183–99, https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443713515739.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Geiß, S., Leidecker, M. and Roessing, T. (2016), ‘The interplay between media-for-monitoring and media-for-searching: How news media trigger searches and edits in Wikipedia’, New Media & Society, 18:11, pp. 2740–59, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815600281.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. GiA Tankred (2022), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 6 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  17. Goffman, E. (1974), Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, London: Harper and Row.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Goldspink, C. (2010), ‘Normative behavior in Wikipedia’, Information, Communication & Society, 13:5, pp. 652–73, https://doi.org/10.1080/13691180903214523.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Guest, G., MacQueen, K. M. and Namey, E. E. (2012), Applied Thematic Analysis, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Keegan, B., Darren, G. and Contractor, N. (2013), ‘Hot off the Wiki: Structures and dynamics of Wikipedia’s coverage of breaking news events’, American Behavioral Scientist, 57:5, pp. 595–622, https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764212469367.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. L736El’adminalcolico (2022a), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 24 February, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  22. L736El’adminalcolico (2022b), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 2 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  23. Matei, S. A. and Dobrescu, C. (2010), ‘Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view”: Settling conflict through ambiguity’, The Information Society, 27:1, pp. 40–51, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2011.534368.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Messner, M. and South, J. (2011), ‘Legitimizing Wikipedia: How US national newspapers frame and use the online encyclopedia in their coverage’, Journalism Practice, 5:2, pp. 145–60, https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2010.506060.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. P1221 (2022), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 3 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  26. Pan, Z. and Kosicki, G. M. (2001), ‘Framing as strategic action in public deliberation’, in S. D. Reese, O. H. Gandy, Jr. and A. E. Grant (eds), Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 35–65.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Phillips, R. (2019), ‘Frames as boundaries: Rhetorical framing analysis and the confines of public discourse in online news coverage of vegan parenting’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 43:2, pp. 152–70, https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859918814821.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Phyrexian ɸ (2022a), ‘Comment: Invasione russa dell’Ucraina del 2022’, Wikipedia, 16 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Invasione_russa_dell%27Ucraina_del_2022. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  29. Phyrexian ɸ (2022b), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 2 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  30. Pinedjem (2022a), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 6 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  31. Pinedjem (2022b), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 1 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  32. Pinedjem (2022c), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 2 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  33. Potenza2021 (2022), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 24 February, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  34. Ricci, O. and Splendore, S. (2020), ‘Giornalismo enciclopedico: I legacy media come vettore di credibilità nella produzione di breaking news su Wikipedia’, Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa, 1, pp. 1–23, https://doi.org/10.3240/100504.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Ricci, O., Maneri, M. and Quassoli, F. (2019), ‘La storia in-diretta: La costruzione delle voci di Wikipedia sugli attacchi terroristici’, Problemi dell’informazione, 2, pp. 285–313, https://dx.doi.org/10.1445/94252.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Roberts, L. and Xiong-Gum, M. N. (2022), ‘Wikipedia editing as connective intelligence: analyzing the vandal fighter role in the “2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine” Wikipedia article’, Proceedings of the 40th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication, Boston, USA, 6–8 October, New York: Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 55–62, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3513130.3558978.
  37. Ruthven (2022), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 18 May, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  38. Shaw, D. (2008), ‘Wikipedia in the newsroom’, American Journalism Review, 30:1, pp. 40–45.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Steinsson, S. (2024), ‘Rule ambiguity, institutional clashes, and population loss: How Wikipedia became the last good place on the internet’, American Political Science Review, 118:1, pp. 235–51, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055423000138.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Stonewall (2022), ‘Comment: Crisi russo-ucraina’, Wikipedia, 2 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisi_russo-ucraina. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  41. Swarts, J. (2009), ‘The collaborative construction of “fact” on Wikipedia’, Proceedings of the 27th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication, Indiana, USA, 5–7 October, New York: Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 281–88, https://doi.org/10.1145/1621995.1622051.
  42. Van Gorp, B. (2007), ‘The constructionist approach to framing: Bringing culture back’, Journal of Communication, 57:1, pp. 60–78, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-9916.2007.00329.x.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Vgg5465| (2022), ‘Comment: Invasione russa dell’Ucraina del 2022’, Wikipedia, 16 March, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Invasione_russa_dell%27Ucraina_del_2022. Accessed 30 May 2022.
  44. Weltevrede, E. and Borra, E. (2016), ‘Platform affordances and data practices: The value of dispute on Wikipedia’, Big Data & Society, 3:1, pp. 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716653418.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Wolff, R. (2013), ‘The historian’s craft, popular memory, and Wikipedia’, in J. Dougherty and K. Nawrotzki (eds), Writing History in the Digital Age, Chicago, IL: University of Michigan Press, pp. 64–74.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Yasseri, T., Sumi, R., Rung, A., Kornai, A. and Kertész, J. (2012), ‘Dynamics of conflicts in Wikipedia’, PLOS One, 7:6, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0038869.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/macp_00099_1
Loading
Not all Wikipedias are the same: The Italian Wikipedia’s unique approach to the Ukrainian war
Intellect ; https://doi.org/10.1386/macp_00099_1
/content/journals/10.1386/macp_00099_1
/content/journals/10.1386/macp_00099_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Article
Keywords: ethnography ; online communities ; Russia–Ukraine war ; social construction of knowledge ; digital platforms ; digital epistemology

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test