Analyzing Cultural Differences in Collaborative Innovation Networks by Analyzing Editing Behavior in Different-Language Wikipedias

AbstractThis paper aims to identify cultural differences in online collaborative innovation networks by comparing the English, German, Japanese, Korean, and Finish language Wikipedias. Towards this goal we analyze the process of article creation and communal interaction in different language Wikipedias through the lens of social network analysis. Wikipedia exists in 273 languages (August 31, 2010), among them are languages like Finish, Korean, and Japanese which are not shared by other countries. Therefore Wikipedia offers a kind of microscope to analyze how people in these local cultures work together. As all the Wikipedians in the different languages ultimately share the same objectives and goals, this study is a first step to gain some insights from the editors’ behavior on culturally influenced collaboration patterns in the real world. This is based on the premise that the editors reflect their own cultural norms and their way of collaboration in the real world back on the Wikipedia article creation proces