JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

A worldwide overabundance of information comprising misinformation, rumor, and propaganda, concerning COVID-19 can be observed occurring alongside the pandemic itself. In opposing the challenges of this information turmoil, Wikipedia has become an important source of information.

Objective:

This study investigated the ways that the editors of Wikipedia have handled COVID-19 information. Specifically, it focused on the following two questions. 1) What knowledge background do the editors who participated in the production of information on COVID-19 have? 2) How did editors with different knowledge backgrounds collaborate?

Methods:

This study used a large-scale dataset including over 2 million edits in the histories of 1,857 editors who involved in editing 133 articles related to COVID-19 in Japanese Wikipedia. Machine learning methods, including graph neural network methods, Bayesian inference, and Granger causality analysis, were used to establish the editors’ backgrounds and collaboration patterns.

Results:

Three tendencies were identified. 1) Two groups of editors were involved in the production of information on COVID-19. One group had a strong background in sociopolitical topics (soc-pol group), and the other group had a strong background in scientific and medical topics (sci-med group). 2) The soc-pol group played the central role (contributing 70.04% of the contents and 75.61% of the references) in the information production part of the COVID-19 articles on Wikipedia, Here, the sci-med group played only a secondary role. 3) The severity of the pandemic in Japan activated the editing behaviors of the soc-pol group and made them contribute more to the COVID-19 information production in Wikipedia, but it reduced the activation of the editing behaviors of the sci-med group and made them contribute less (correlation coefficient = 0.231, P < .001).

Conclusions:

This study showed how crowd-sourced, community-produced knowledge of COVID-19 was developed through collaboration in the face of scientific uncertainty with reference to the novel pandemic of COVID-19; because the discussions of COVID-19 from a sociopolitical perspective were more controversial, the Wikipedia community expended more effort in editing and revising this information to ensure its quality and reliability.