Multilingual Wikipedia as a Source of Information on Current Affairs Content
Experience at the European University of Madrid (2024)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62161/revvisual.v18.6407Keywords:
Wikipedia, US Elections (2024), Reliability, Current affairs, Multilingualism, Information literacyAbstract
The present text aims to demonstrate a classroom activity that analyzes how information on Wikipedia differs according to the language in which it is presented. It compares the length, bibliography, footnotes, and the possibility of editing in each of them. The aim is to assess the relevance, objectivity, and bias given to the same current affairs topics included in media in different languages. Thus, 109 freshmen students from 32 different nationalities, of a Bachelor's Degree in IR, selected and analyzed current affairs in their mother tongue. Competencies such as internationality, teamwork, use of new technologies and critical thinking are promoted.
Downloads
Global Statistics ℹ️
|
23
Views
|
14
Downloads
|
|
37
Total
|
|
References
Aguaded, I., y Romero-Rodríguez, L. (2015). Mediamorfosis y desinformación en la infoesfera: Alfabetización mediática, digital e informacional ante los cambios de hábitos de consumo informativo. Education in the Knowledge Society, 16(1), 44-57. https://doi.org/10.14201/eks20151614457 DOI: https://doi.org/10.14201/eks20151614457
Baigutanova, A., Saez-Trumper, D., Redi, M., Cha, M., & Aragón, P. (2023, October). A Comparative Study of Reference Reliability in Multiple Language Editions of Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (pp. 3743-3747). https://doi.org/10.1145/3583780.3615254 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3583780.3615254
Blumenstock, J. E. (2008). Size matters: Word count as a measure of quality on Wikipedia, in Proceeding of the 17th International, WWW’08, pp. 1095–1096, doi: 10.1145/1367497.1367673. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1367497.1367673
Buchan, K., Jr. (2011). Critical Thinking in the Information Age: How the Internet Is Shaping the Way Students Think. Doctoral dissertation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21577 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21577
Claes F. y Tramullas J. (2021). Estudios sobre la credibilidad de Wikipedia: una revisión. Área Abierta. Revista de comunicación audiovisual y publicitaria, 21(2), 187-204. https://doi.org/10.5209/arab.74050 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5209/arab.74050
DataReportal, & We Are Social, & Meltwater. (February 5, 2025). Average daily time spent using the internet by 3rd quarter 2024, by age and gender (in hours. minutes) [Gráfico]. En: Statista. https://goo.su/jKDrhF
Ennis, R. H. (2008). Nationwide Testing of Critical Thinking for Higher Education: Vigilance Required. Teaching Philosophy, 31(1),1-26 https://doi.org/10.5840/teachphil20083111 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/teachphil20083111
García-Delgado Giménez, B. y Pinto Tortosa, A. J. (2024). ¿Es Wikipedia una fuente académica fiable?: una experiencia en la Universidad Europea durante la COVID-19. En: Marín-Dueñas, Pedro Pablo, Ruiz Callejón, Encarnación, Cristófol Rodríguez, Francisco Javier. Herramientas y técnicas para la optimización del proceso educativo. (pp. 137-146). Marcial Pons. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.26844189.16
Gildersleve, P., Lambiotte, R. & Yasseri, T. (2023). Between news and history: identifying networked topics of collective attention on Wikipedia. J Comput Soc Sc 6, 845–875. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-023-00215-w DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-023-00215-w
Greenstein, S., Gu, G., & Zhu, F. (2021). Ideology and composition among an online crowd: Evidence from Wikipedians. Management Science, 67(5), 3067-3086. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3661 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3661
Hannon, J. & D’Netto B (2007) Cultural diversity online: student engagement with learning technologies. International Journal of Educational Management 21(5): 418–432. DOI: 10.1108/09513540710760192. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/09513540710760192
Hickman, M. G., Pasad, V., Sanghavi, H. K., Thebault-Spieker, J., & Lee, S. W. (2021). Understanding wikipedia practices through hindi, urdu, and english takes on an evolving regional conflict. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 5(CSCW1), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1145/3449108 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3449108
Hwang, S., & Shaw, A. (2022). Rules and Rule-Making in the Five Largest Wikipedias. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 16(1), 347-357. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v16i1.19297 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v16i1.19297
Khairuddin, Z., K. M. Daud, N. Anuar, O. Satimin, F. H. Mohd & S. S. Yusof. (2024). Relationship Between Perceived Students' Critical Thinking Skills and Academic Writing Skills. International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science 8 (3): 4709–4721. https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.803343S DOI: https://doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.803343S
Kurniasih, N., Yulianti, Y. et al. (2018). The Utilization of Search Engines by Students of the Library and Information Science Program at Universitas Padjadjaran. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1114, no. 1: 12085. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1088/ 1742- 6596/ 1114/1/012085. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1114/1/012085
Lewoniewski, W., Wecel, K. & Abramowicz, W. (2017). Analysis of reference sources across Wikipedia languages. International Conference on Information and Software Technologies. Pp. 561-573. DOI: 10.15439/2022F259 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67642-5_47
Liu OL, Ling G and Fishtein D (2021) Charting the skills for the future: perspectives from employers and higher education institutions. Chinese/English Journal of Educational Measurement and Evaluation 2(1): 3. https://doi.org/10.59863/VNWR4406 DOI: https://doi.org/10.59863/VNWR4406
Lopatovska, I., M. R. Fenton, and S. Campot. (2012). Examining Preferences for Search Engines and Their Effects on Information Behavior. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 49, no. 1: 1–11. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1002/ meet. 14504 901110. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.14504901110
Markoski, F., Markoska, E., Ljubešić, N., Zdravevski, E., & Kocarev, L. (2021, September). Cultural topic modelling over novel Wikipedia corpora for South-Slavic languages. In Proceedings of the international conference on recent advances in natural language processing (ranlp 2021) (pp. 910-917). DOI: https://doi.org/10.26615/978-954-452-072-4_104
McCrowre, R., & Adivar, B. (2024). Exploring underlying factors for variations in digital upskilling. Industry and Higher Education, 38(6), 515-533. https://doi.org/10.1177/09504222241249078 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/09504222241249078
Miller, M. (2025, Octubre 17). New User Trends in Wikipedia. Diff. https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/new-user-trends-on-wikipedia/
Miquel, M., Laniado, D., & Kaltenbrunner, A. (2021). The Role of Local Content in Wikipedia: A Study on Reader and Editor Engagement1. Área Abierta, 21(2), 123-151. https://doi.org/10.5209/arab.72801 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5209/arab.72801
Miquel-Ribé, M., & Laniado, D. (2016, July). Cultural identities in Wikipedias. In Proceedings of the 7th 2016 International Conference on Social Media & Society (pp. 1-10). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2930971.2930996
Pan, L., S. U. Haq, X. Shi, and M. Nadeem. (2024). The Impact of Digital Competence and Personal Innovativeness on the Learning Behavior of Students: Exploring the Moderating Role of Digitalization in Higher Education Quality. SAGE Open 14, no. 3: 21–58. https:// doi. org/ 10.1177/ 21582 44024 1265919. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440241265919
Pew Research Center. (2024, June 11). People who have a favorable view of the United States worldwide in 2024, by country [Graph]. En Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1395796/views-united-states-worldwide-country/
Pew Research Center. (2025, June 10). Share of respondents in selected countries with confidence in Donald Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs in 2025 [Gráfico]. En Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1616056/donald-trump-confidence-international/
Prieto, JS, Torres JMT, García, MG, et al. (2020) Gender and digital teaching competence in dual vocational education and training. Education Sciences 10(3): 84. DOI: 10.3390/educsci10030084 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10030084
Ruprechter T, Burghardt K, Helic D (2023) Poor attention: The wealth and regional gaps in attention and coverage on Wikipedia. PLoS ONE 18(11): e0289325. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289325 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289325
Shen, X. L., Cheung, C. M., & Lee, M. K. (2013). What leads students to adopt information from W ikipedia? An empirical investigation into the role of trust and information usefulness. British journal of educational technology, 44(3), 502-517. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01335.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01335.x
Sierra-Iso, A., Labiano-Juangarcía, R., Novoa-Jaso, M. F., & Vara-Miguel, A. (2025). Digital News Report España 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15581/019.2026
SimilarWeb. (2024, April 1). Worldwide visits to Wikipedia.org from October 2023 to March 2024 (in billions) [Gráfico]. En Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1259907/wikipedia-website-traffic/
Spante, M., S. S. Hashemi, M. Lundin, and A. Algers. (2018). Digital Competence and Digital Literacy in Higher Education Research: Systematic Review of Concept Use. Cogent Education 5, no. 1: 1519143. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 23311 86X. 2018. 1519143. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2018.1519143
Sugandhika, C. & Ahangama, S. (2021, December). Modelling Wikipedia’s information quality using informativeness, reliability and authority. In 2021 3rd International Conference on Advancements in Computing (ICAC) (pp. 169-174). IEEE. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICAC54203.2021.9671092
Tlili A, Jemni M, Khribi MK, et al. (2020) Current state of open educational resources in the Arab region: an investigation in 22 countries. Smart Learning Environments 7: 11–15. DOI:10.1186/s40561-020-00120-z. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-020-00120-z
Universidad Europea de Madrid (2025). Observatorio de Inteligencia Artificial en Educación Superior (mayo 2025): inteligencia artificial perspectivas y desafíos desde la visión del estudiante. https://goo.su/vxXogAR
Wikimedia. (2024b, December 3). Most viewed English language articles on Wikipedia in 2024 [Gráfico]. En Statista. https://surl.li/djfnlr
Wikimedia. (2024c, December 4). Number of active registered users on Wikipedia.org as of December 2024, by language [Gráfico]. En Statista. from https://surl.li/stufcs
Wikipedia: lista completa de Wikipedias (2025, marzo 1). En Wikipedia https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
World angEconomic Forum (2025). Future of Jobs 2025: Insight Report. World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-ofjobs-report-2025/
Yang, E., & Roberts, M.E. (2021). Censorship of Online Encyclopedias: Implications for NLP Models. Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445916
YouGov. (2024, November 8). Attention paid to the presidential election campaign for in the lead up to the election in the United States in 2024, by age [Gráfico]. En Statista. https://surl.lu/uiluck
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Authors retain copyright and transfer to the journal the right of first publication and publishing rights

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Those authors who publish in this journal accept the following terms:
-
Authors retain copyright.
-
Authors transfer to the journal the right of first publication. The journal also owns the publishing rights.
-
All published contents are governed by an Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Access the informative version and legal text of the license. By virtue of this, third parties are allowed to use what is published as long as they mention the authorship of the work and the first publication in this journal. If you transform the material, you may not distribute the modified work. -
Authors may make other independent and additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (e.g., inclusion in an institutional repository or publication in a book) as long as they clearly indicate that the work was first published in this journal.
- Authors are allowed and recommended to publish their work on the Internet (for example on institutional and personal websites), following the publication of, and referencing the journal, as this could lead to constructive exchanges and a more extensive and quick circulation of published works (see The Effect of Open Access).







