The emergence of Wikipedia as a new media institution

Wikipedia is an important institution and part of the new media landscape having evolved from the collaborative efforts of millions of distributed users. This poster will present ongoing research that examines how the issues that have been highlighted by conflict within the community have shaped the evolution of Wikipedia from an open wiki experiment to a global knowledge producer. Bringing together the concepts of interpretive flexibility and generative friction with existing theories on the evolution of institutions, the research aims to present possible futures for Wikipedia as part of not only the larger Wikimedia movement, but of an open and accessible web. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.2 [History of Computing]: Theory. K.4.3 [Computers and society]: Organizational Impacts - Computer-supported collaborative work. General Terms Economics, Human Factors, Theory.