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The networked life of professional encyclopaedias: quantification, tradition, and trustworthiness

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

The article aims at making visible new orders of encyclopaedic knowledge by means of an ethnographic study carried out during eight months at the editorial office of the leading commercial encyclopaedia in Sweden, Nationalencyklopedin. The investigation is framed in a socio-technical understanding of how people, technologies and practices relate to each other. Three themes were identified during the analysis: Organisation of labour amongst the editors, the use of statistics, and NE as a producer of facts versus a producer of analysis. The analysis revolves around the ambivalence, uncertainty, sometimes even friction, between traditional encyclopaedic knowledge and network culture. The often routine-based practices of updating articles meets ideas of project work, of open data, of algorithms and most of all of quantification.

Department/s

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Publication/Series

First Monday

Volume

18

Issue

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

University of Illinois

Topic

  • Information Studies

Keywords

  • information studies
  • encyclopaedias
  • trust
  • socio-technical perspective
  • digital culture
  • Nationalencyklopedin

Status

Published

Project

  • Encyclopaedias' Trustworthiness in the Digital Media Landscape

Research group

  • Information Studies
  • Information Practices: Communication, Culture and Society

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1396-0466