Iolanda Pensa, Wikipedia as a new cultural battlefield. Swiss Researching Africa Days, Bern, 16/10/2014.

1. Wikipedia as a new cultural battlefield. Swiss Researching Africa Days, Bern, 17/10/2014.
Iolanda Pensa - SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland
Artwork: © Yinka Shonibare, Scramble for Africa, 2000 in Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora. Commissioned by and courtesy Museum for African Art NY.

2. Michel Foucault’s power and knowledge
Sarat Maharaj’s art and knowledge production
Achille Mbembe’s borders Marc Augé’s non-places
Edward Said’s Orientalism
Jean-Loup Amselle’s connections
Homi K. Bhabha’s location of culture
Frantz Fanon’s colonial violence and weight
Arjun Appadurai’s cultural dimensions of globalization
Saskia Sassen’s global city
V.Y. Mudimbe’s invention of Africa
We need to rewrite history Rasheed Araeen
Tirdad Zolghadr’s approach to art and exhibitions
Heather Ford’s missing Wikipedians
Mathieu O’Neil’s cyberchiefs
Mark Graham’s Africa on Wikipedia
Steven Weber’s open source production
Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams’s Wikinomics
Maja van der Velden’s contact zone on Wikipedia
Yochai Benkler’s networked social production and open collaboration

3. Representations of Africa
Historiography
Self-representation
Background knowledge
Dissemination of academic knowledge
Colonial and post-colonial archives
Authorship
Languages
Sources
Restitution
Power Control
Licenses
Reaching the public
Oral sources
Niche
Mobile phones
Connectivity ICT
Availability of sources
Access to sources
Access to data
Internet
Research ethics
Culture
Relationships Academic credits with institutions and governments
History
Contemporary society Intercultural dialogue
Geographic dynamics
Anthropology Geography
Africa in public domain content (-early XX century) uploaded on Wikipedia
Sharing knowledge and problematic content which it is not easy to share (art
from secret societies, human remains, content not contextualized…)

4. © Information Architects, Web Trand Map 2007/V2, 2007.

5. Wikipedia as a new continent, participating with a growing role in shaping culture and local cultures, and contributing to cultural processes.

6. Wikipedia Zero. Access to Wikipedia on mobile phones for free.
Distribution of offline Wikipedia on DVD, USB key and in classrooms. Credits: Wikimedia Commons, cc by-sa.

7. © Bili Bidjocka, Ecriture Infinie, http://www.ecritureinfinie.org.

8. Correcting a mistake on Wikipedia. DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, Share Your Knowledge, 2011-2012, cc by-sa.

9. Adding text to an article on Wikipedia. DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, Share Your Knowledge, 2011-2012, cc by-sa.

10. © Chacho Pueble, his great-aunt and photos by his sister Lula, http://www.behance.net/gallery/Grandmother-Tips/2392946.

13. Why

14. Wikipedia editors. DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, Share Your Knowledge, 2011-2012, cc by-sa.
1

15. Spacial distribution of edits for Wikipedia in English. Erik Zachte, May 2011, cc by-sa.

16. © Mounir Fatmi, G8 Les balais, 2004, installation.
2

17. Chris Harrison, WikiViz, 2006.
3

18. How

19. I.
People and institutions do not need to become
Wikipedias to contribute.
The license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, Share Your Knowledge, 2011-2012, cc by-sa.

20. Chimurenga Library, 2007-2008. A project promoted by Chimurenga and supported by lettera27/WikiAfrica, GNU GPL / cc by-sa.

21. Brooklyn Museum
Feed My Starving Children
International Institute for !
Communication and Development
AfricaFilms.tv
Gambia National Museum
Zanzibar National Museum
Phuthidikabo Museum,
Seychelles People Defense ! Mochudi, Botswana
Forces Museum (SPDF)
Uganda National Museum
Orange and Orange Foundation (free Wikipedia on mobile phones)
Creative Commons affiliate
Event: conference/training/workshop
Presentations and events
Research
Archives
Notebooks (Detour, myDetour, WikiAfrica special editions)
Wiki Loves Monuments
Sustainable Sanitation Alliance
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung
Western Province Government – Department of museums - 28
museums in Western Cape Province, South Africa, Bartolomeu Dias
Museum, Beaufort-West Museum, Caledon Museum, Cango Caves
Museum, Cape Medical Museum, CP Nel Museum, Drostdy Museum,
Fransie Pienaar Museum, Genadendal Mission Museum, George
Museum, Groot-Brakrivier Museum, Hout Bay Museum, Huguenot
Memorial Museum, Jan Dankaert Museum, Koopmans De Wet House
Museum, Montagu Museum, Old Harbour Museum, Paarl Museum,
Robertson Museum, SA Fisheries Museum,
Sendinggestig(Missionary)Museum, Shipwreck Museum, Simon's Town
Museum, Stellenbosch Museum, Transport Riders Museum, Wellington
Museum, Wheat Industry Museum, Worcester Museum
Dataset of administrations in Botswana
Sungani Zakwathu Cultural Heritage Promotions!
Postal Museum, Matengatenga, Malawi
WikiAfrica/Share Your Knowledge 2006-2012. Status report, 2013, cc by-sa. http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Case_studies/WikiAfrica/Share_Your_Knowledge/Institutions

22. Raccolte Extraeuropee del Castello Sforzesco, Milano, 2012, Raccolte civiche Extraeuropee, Castello Sforzesco, Milano. Images and catalogue on Wikimedia Commons while the collection was not onlin We inkoimr eedxihai bCitoemd,m 2o01n2s,, cccc bbyy--ssaa..

23. The National Archives UK, Wikimedia Commons, cc by-sa.

24. National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Wikimedia Commons, cc by-sa.

25. WIKIPEDIA PRIMARY SCHOOL
Providing on Wikipedia the information necessary to complete the cycle of primary
education in the languages used by the different education systems.
RESEARCH PROBLEM
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Primary_School - April 2014
The research is developed within a Swiss-South African
cooperation lead by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts
of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) and the University of Cape
Town, in partnership with Wikimedia Switzerland and the Africa
Centre based in Cape Town, and with the support of SNF and
the South African National Research Foundation (NRF).!
Iolanda Pensa (principal investigator Switzerland), Tobias
Schönwetter (principal investigator South Africa), Luca Botturi,
Davide Fornari, Giancarlo Gianocca, Isla Haddow-Flood, Erica
Litrenta, Giovanni Profeta, Kelsey Wiens.
Wikipedia is meant to be an educational tool and it is currently
available online, via mobile phones and offline. Experiences
have shown that, once accessible, Wikipedia does not provide
information that responds directly to curriculum-based questions.
The project relies on Wikipedia as an existing and growing
resource, it solves the need for an encyclopedia capable of
responding to curriculum-based questions, and it fosters
Wikipedia content, quality and outreach.
THE PROJECT RESEARCH TEAM
The research project developed within a Swiss-South African
cooperation (2014-2017) focuses on the theoretical frame of
Wikipedia Primary School and in developing and evaluating a
system to assess Wikipedia articles for primary education and to
involve a wide network of scholars and contributors in their
production. !
More specifically the project aims at:!
1. Bridging Wikipedia and primary education. This objective
implies to move the Wikipedia community towards a focus on
primary education, and at the same time to strengthen the
capacity of the education ecosystem to contribute to
Wikipedia, and in general to open collaborative knowledge.
2. Enriching Wikipedia with new content relevant to primary
education. This objective implies an assessment of the
articles produced.
3. Fostering the development of translations and new content in
different Wikipedia linguistic editions. This objective implies
the release of existing educational resources (OER in cc by
or cc by-sa), the production of datasets and the involvement
of the Wikimedia movement.
4. Verifying and evaluating the use of Wikipedia as a source of
information for primary education. This objective implies the
involvement of stakeholders and data analysis.
Wikipedia Primary School contributes to universal primary
education and to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG2:
Achieve Universal Primary Education). Even if it is scalable and
international, the project is conceived primarily to address African
countries and languages.
II.

26. Mounir Fatmi, Les connexions, 2003-2004, installation.
It is not a fight against
Wikipedia.
It is a fight with Wikipedia,
for all its 400 million
growing readers, and for
knowledge.
Iolanda Pensa - io@pensa.it - http://iopensa.it

27. Extra

28. DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, Share Your Knowledge, 2011-2012, cc by-sa.

30. The countries promoting the contest Wiki Loves Monuments 2010-2013 and documenting with a total of 900’000 images cultural heritage around the world, 2014, cc by-sa.

32. “The big opportunity with open licenses is far more practical:
it has the potential to dramatically increase the impact, reach
and scale of the ideas we invest in…”
!
The Shuttleworth Foundation, 2008

33. The Africa Centre in Cape Town South Africa promoting “WikiAfrica: Increasing the the quality and quantity of African content on Wikipedia”.

34. © Tsesler & Voichenko, Welcome, Minsk, Road sign.

35. Iolanda Pensa - io@pensa.it - http://iopensa.it
DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, Share Your Knowledge, 2011-2012, cc by-sa.

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