Wikipedia

Wikipedia and antisemitism

Antisemitism on Wikipedia has been raised as a concern over the misconduct of some editors, systemic anti-Jewish bias, and aspects of the coverage of the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on English and other language Wikipedias. Starting in the early years of Wikipedia, antisemitic conduct was observed and sanctioned. Antisemitism-related research has examined Wikipedia's treatment of the Holocaust[1] and its policy of neutrality.[2]

Scholars have also used Wikipedia data in sundry ways to research online antisemitism.[3][4] Richard Utz, a scholar of anti-Jewish medieval narratives, has called for Wikipedia editing to combat residual antisemitic sentiment and contemporary anti-Jewish propaganda.[5]

Antisemitic misconduct

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In the early years of Wikipedia, there were isolated cases of antisemitic misconduct by Wikipedia contributors, as well as a more large scale incident. In his book on Wikipedia culture, Joseph Reagle notes, for example, that a Wikipedian was blocked in 2005 for posting a list of purported Jewish editors. In his "Nazis and Norms" chapter, Reagle highlights a broader 2005 episode when neo-Nazis apparently mobilized to preserve an article on "Jewish ethnocentrism," based on the writings of an antisemitic professor. According to Reagle, neo-Nazis and other Wikipedians were polite in their discussions, in keeping with Wikipedia etiquette and in keeping with the neo-Nazi guidance to avoid offending Wikipedians with anti-Jewish criticism.[6] Nonetheless, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stated that he would set aside ordinary procedures, protect the encyclopedia, and ban users as needed "if 300 neo-Nazis show up and start doing serious damage."[6]

Other misconduct has included antisemitic vandalism on Wikipedia pages[7][8] and the creation of accounts with antisemitic names,[2] the creative nature of which obscures their identification.[9] Wikipedia has responded, for example, banning a user for their anti-Jewish campaign.[2] Antisemitic vandalism on Wikipedia pages typically result in quick reversals by site editors.[7]

Other concerns raised was the perception of a trend to deliberately tag biographies of Jewish individuals as Jewish could be motivated by malicious intent, however, where editors appear to be following site guidelines, concern should be set aside.[10][11]

Systemic anti-Jewish bias

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Antisemitism may entail subtle or systemic bias rather than explicit anti-Jewish misconduct on Wikipedia. In one study, the use of nouns in relation to Jews and Judaism on Wikipedia was found to exhibit a mix of positive and negative associations, though overall they lean slightly positive. Words like "scholar," "culture," and "heritage" often accompany "Jewish," presenting Judaism in contexts of intellectual and cultural contributions. However, certain terms, such as "lobby" and "conspiracy," reveal recurring biases and negative stereotypes that frame Jews as political entities with potentially undue influence. Nevertheless, the study concludes that the word "Islamic" is far more likely to be associated with a negative connotations than the word "Jewish" or "Christian".[12]

For researchers, Wikipedia is viewed as a site where contentious topics are debated and reframed, and as a site of cultural expression.[13][14] Selective framing may be read as antisemitic, as when the targeting of Jews is de-emphasized in encyclopedia articles of mass murder sites.[14][15] Along these lines, in 2018, a Jewish publication criticized editors for seeking to delete an article about antisemitism in the British Labour Party and hide the prejudice involved.[16]

Wikipedia's editing policy offers the opportunity for the creation of articles with antisemitic bias, an issue that editors resolve through processes of article deletion.[17][18]

In other cases, references to the antisemitic views of notable individuals have been deleted. And Wikipedia's open platform allows for 'edit wars' to occur between motivated parties.[19]

Antisemitic viewpoints have been observed on Wikipedia's non-English sites. A 2012 study found that many Wikipedias treated Judaism as a conspiracy theory.[20] For instance, viewpoints expressed in antisemitic literature will be expressed as a legitimate historical viewpoint.[21] In some instances, pages concerning popular individuals who maintain antisemitic viewpoints will be edited with a respectful tone.[22] Compared to English Wikipedia, the Polish version was found to downplay the Jewish ethnicity of favored persons of note, arguably reflecting Polish values and concerns.[23]

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Scholars and Jewish community groups have paid close attention to signs of anti-Jewish and other bias in articles about the Holocaust. User discussions on Wikipedia talk pages often extend beyond mere factual representation, as contributors engage in collective memory-making, which can include the recollection of traumatic historical events, such as the Holocaust.[24]

For example, Daniel Wolniewicz-Slomka analyzed the framing of three Holocaust 2014 articles in the English, Hebrew, and Polish Wikipedias, without explicitly labeling any differences as biased against Jews or Poles. For the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp article, it was found that the Polish version emphasized responsibility of German Nazis, not Poles, and it omits the category of collaborators, e.g., the Kapo. The Hebrew article mentions Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Polish heroics, while the Polish article omits the former. Only the Polish article brings up the problem of Holocaust denial. For the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom, the language versions diverge more. While all three identify Poles as the perpetrators, the Polish article further notes that Poles had strong antisemitic feelings. German incitement is covered more in English Wikipedia. (Third were the Righteous Among the Nations articles.) Overall, the author found that the framing was less tied, than anticipated, to the concurrent dispute between Poles and Israeli Jews over of the Holocaust. Indeed, the Polish Wikipedia was more critical of Poles than the nationalistic sense of Poles as "noble victims."[15]

Relying partly on the Wolniewicz-Slomka methodology, Mykola Makhortykh compared editor interpretations of the Babi Yar massacres in the English, Russian, and Ukrainian Wikipedias. The Russian and Ukrainian articles paid roughly half (48, 41, 82%) as much attention as the English Wikipedia to the atrocities committed. The Russian and Ukrainian versions also emphasized the trauma on (surviving) non-Jews and as an attack on the Ukrainian people overall. The Ukrainian Wikipedia here places less emphasis on Jewish suffering, which Makhortykh says is marginalized in favor of Ukrainian national victimhood.[14] This version also saw, in the Talk pages, effort to deny Ukrainian responsibility. All three Wikipedias has contributors who sought to deny the Holocaust. Overall, the research found that these massacres were presented in Wikipedia to favor a national viewpoint (e.g., blaming Ukrainians in the Russian text) and to disparage the memory of the Holocaust (e.g., by stressing Ukrainian suffering in their language Wikipedia).[14]

In an explicitly critical vein, in 2023 Grabowski and Klein have described Wikipedia editors as intentionally introducing skewed views and distortions in the encyclopedia's history of the Holocaust.[25] In response, the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee opened a case to investigate and evaluate the actions of editors in the affected articles.[26] Ultimately, the Committee banned two editors from the topic areas, although Klein criticized the proposed remedies as "[lacking] depth and consequence".[27]

Hebrew Wikipedia is noted for detailed treatment of antisemitism in the context of various historical articles.[28]

Bias in Israel-related content

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See also: Wikipedia and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

In editing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to Oboler, editors have "campaigned" for an Arab or Palestinian viewpoint without being antisemitic.[2]

Conversely, various established Jewish community organizations have alleged a potential pattern of anti-Jewish bias on the part of Wikipedia editors that effectively silences what they argue are Jewish communal perspectives on matters relating to the State of Israel. In the wake of the October 7, 2024 terror attack in Israel, the World Jewish Congress alleged that Wikipedia entries in English demonstrate a pattern of antisemitic and anti-Israel bias.[29]

In 2024, Wikipedia faced accusations of bias based on changes to its article about Zionism. Some of the controversial language related to the framing of Zionism as colonization, as well as the statement that Zionists wanted "as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinians as possible". The Anti-Defamation League called the revised language "historically inaccurate" and "derogatory".[30] Israeli writer Hen Mazzig called the entry "downright antisemitic", saying that it promoted the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry. US congressman Ritchie Torres called it a "warped telling of history," counting "Israeli Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, as well as from Ethiopia" among the "European colonizers."[31]

In 2024, a Wikipedia article titled "Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza" was renamed to "Gaza genocide". Editors who supported the move claimed that there was an academic consensus on the matter, while editors who opposed it argued that it violated Wikipedia's neutrality rules and reflected an anti-Israeli bias.[32][33]

Concerns were raised regarding editors removing antisemitism as one of the ideologies of Hamas.[34] Other concerns raised related to the perception of editor behaviour on pages relating to Jewish community groups combating antisemitism.[35]

Source selection

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A decision to label the Anti-Defamation League as unreliable was viewed by some Jewish community members as an attempt to delegitimize Jewish communal perspectives, and expressed concern it would provide cover for antisemitic editing.[36][37][38] The move also raised concerns of Deborah Lipstadt, the American envoy on antisemitism.[39]

A number of Jewish groups jointly wrote a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, asking them to reverse the decision which they said stripped "the Jewish community of the right to defend itself from the hatred that targets our community". The Foundation replied that it does not involve itself in such decisions, which are made by a community of volunteer editors.[40]

Other Jewish sources banned by Wikipedia include the Jewish Virtual Library, an online encyclopedia, and NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel advocacy group.[41]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Pfanzelter, Eva (2015). "At the crossroads with public history: Mediating the Holocaust on the Internet". Holocaust Studies. 21 (4): 250–271.
  2. ^ a b c d Oboler, Andre; Steinberg, Gerald; Stern, Rephael (11 October 2010). "The Framing of Political NGOs in Wikipedia through Criticism Elimination". Journal of Information Technology & Politics. 7 (4): 284–299. doi:10.1080/19331680903577822. 
  3. ^ Mustafa, Raza Ul; Japkowicz, Nathalie (2024). "Monitoring the evolution of antisemitic discourse on extremist social media using BERT". Arxiv. doi:10.48550/ARXIV.2403.05548.
  4. ^ Zannettou, Savvas; Finkelstein, Joel; Bradlyn, Barry; Blackburn, Jeremy (2020-05-26). "A Quantitative Approach to Understanding Online Antisemitism". Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. 14: 786–797. doi:10.1609/icwsm.v14i1.7343. ISSN 2334-0770.
  5. ^ Utz, R. (2019). Medievalism, Antisemitism, and Twenty-First-Century Media: An Update. Studies in Medievalism XXVIII: Medievalism and Discrimination, 41-50.
  6. ^ a b Reagle, Joseph M. (2012). Good faith collaboration: the culture of Wikipedia. History and Foundations of Information Science. Cambridge, Mass. London: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01447-2.
  7. ^ a b "Wikipedia fixed its swastika problem fast. Why can't anyone else?". 16 August 2021.
  8. ^ "Pictures of Swastikas temporarily replaced Wikipedia pages for Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck". Business Insider.
  9. ^ Aksit, F. G. An Empirical Research:“Wikipedia Vandalism Detection using VandalSense 2.0”.
  10. ^ "Jew-Tagging @Wikipedia". Commentary. 17 April 2020.
  11. ^ "The Mystery of the Wikipedia Editor Who Obsessively Keeps Track of Jews". Mosaic.
  12. ^ Mohamed, E. (2016). Jewish, christian and islamic in the english wikipedia. Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 11. "These two issues aside, I have found that in Wikipedia Islamic is probably more negative than either Christian or Jewish..."
  13. ^ Baker, M. J., & Détienne, F. (2024). Arguing across spaces in an online epistemic community: Case studies in controversial Wikipedia articles. Journal of Argumentation in Context, 13(1), 1-48.
  14. ^ a b c d Makhortykh, Mykola (2017). "Framing the Holocaust Online: Memory of the Babi Yar Massacres on Wikipedia". Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media. 18: 67–94. ISSN 2043-7633.
  15. ^ a b Wolniewicz-Slomka, Daniel (22 December 2016). "Framing the Holocaust in popular knowledge: 3 articles about the Holocaust in English, Hebrew and Polish Wikipedia". Adeptus (8): 29–49.
  16. ^ Rosenberg, Yair. "How Some Wikipedia Editors Tried—and Failed—To Erase The UK Labour Party's Anti-Semitism Problem". Tablet.
  17. ^ Tripodi, Francesca (June 27, 2021). "Ms. Categorized: Gender, notability, and inequality on Wikipedia". New Media & Society. 25 (7): 1687–1707. doi:10.1177/14614448211023772. 
  18. ^ De Vera, E. (2020). Classifying Eugenics: A “Wandering Subject” moves to Wikipedia (Doctoral dissertation).
  19. ^ Rosenzweig, Roy (2006). "Can history be open source? Wikipedia and the future of the past". The Journal of American History. 93 (1): 117–146.
  20. ^ Bao, P., Hecht, B., Carton, S., Quaderi, M., Horn, M., & Gergle, D. (2012, May). Omnipedia: bridging the wikipedia language gap. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1075-1084).
  21. ^ Matussek, C. (2013). Fertile Ground for a Poisonous Weed: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Arab World. Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 7(3), 71-78.
  22. ^ Graff, A. (2022). Jewish perversion as strategy of domination: the anti-semitic subtext of anti-gender discourse. Journal of Modern European History, 20(3), 423-439.
  23. ^ Callahan, E. S., & Herring, S. C. (2011). Cultural bias in Wikipedia content on famous persons. Journal of the American society for information science and technology, 62(10), 1899-1915.
  24. ^ Ferron, Michela; Massa, Paolo (July 8, 2013). "Beyond the encyclopedia: Collective memories in Wikipedia". Memory Studies (journal). 7 (1): 22–45. doi:10.1177/1750698013490590. 
  25. ^ Jan, Grabowski; Shira, Klein (2023). "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". The Journal of Holocaust Research. 37 (2): 133–190.
  26. ^ ELIA-SHALEV, ASAF (1 March 2023). "Wikipedia's 'Supreme Court' tackles alleged conspiracy to distort articles on Holocaust". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 11 March 2023.
  27. ^ Metzger, Cerise Valenzuela (2023-05-16). "Ruling on Wikipedia's Distortion of Holocaust History Lacks Depth". Chapman University. Archived from the original on 2023-05-27. Retrieved 2023-09-25.
  28. ^ Tsahor, D. (2023). The Book of the People: The Hebrew Encyclopedic Project and the National Self (Vol. 117). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
  29. ^ Wikipedia entries show anti-Israel bias says WJC. World Jewish Congress. Accessed 1 October 2024.
  30. ^ Heller, Mathilda. "Wikipedia's page on Zionism is partly edited by an anti-Zionist - investigation". The Jerusalem Post.
  31. ^ Cordi, Peter. "Wikipedia blasted for 'wildly inaccurate' change to entry on Zionism: 'Downright antisemitic'". Washington Examiner.
  32. ^ Edelson, Daniel. "Amid Gaza war, Wikipedia editors conclude Israel guilty of genocide". Ynetnews.
  33. ^ Goichman, Refaella. "English-language Wikipedia Editors Concluded: Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza". Haaretz.
  34. ^ "Seven Tactics Wikipedia Editors Used to Spread Anti-Israel Bias Since Oct. 7". 23 May 2024.
  35. ^ Gal, Hannah. "A spike in antisemitism has British Jewry worrying for the future". The Jerusalem Post.
  36. ^ Bandler, Aaron. "Forty-three Jewish Orgs Call on Wikimedia to Reconsider Editors' Decision on ADL". Jewish Journal.
  37. ^ Goldman, David. "Wikipedia now labels the top Jewish civil rights group as an unreliable source". CNN.
  38. ^ Wikipedia ADL Israel Palestinian conflict and antisemitism. USA Today. Accessed 6 October 2024.
  39. ^ "Lipstadt 'deeply disturbed' by Wikipedia's ban on the ADL". 8 August 2024.
  40. ^ "Wikipedia rebuffs Jewish groups' call to override editors' move against ADL". Times of Israel.
  41. ^ Elia-Shalev, Asaf. "Wikipedia moves to bar ADL, claiming reliability concerns on Israel and antisemitim". Times of Israel.
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