Information Behavior of Wikipedia Fan Editors - (Communication Perspectives in Popular Culture) by Paul A Thomas (Hardcover)

About the Book

The Information Behavior of Wikipedia Fan Editors: A Digital (Auto)Ethnography explores the information practices of the many Wikipedia "fan editors," who work on articles about pop culture media. This book analyzes the complexity of their informational behavior and the motivations behind it.

Book Synopsis

Situated at the intersection of library and information science (LIS), Wikipedia studies, and fandom studies, this book is a digital (auto)ethnography that documents the information behavior of Wikipedia "fan editors"--that is, individuals who edit articles about pop culture media. Given Wikipedia's prominence in LIS and fan studies scholarship, both as one of the world's most heavily used reference sources and as an important archive for fan communities, fan editors are a crucial component of this ecosystem as some of Wikipedia's most active contributors. Through a combination of fieldwork observations, insight from key informants, and the author's own experiences as a Wikipedia editor, this monograph provides a rich articulation of fan editor information behavior and offers a significant contribution to scholarship in a number of fields. Scholars of library and information science, media studies, fandom studies, and popular culture will find this book of particular interest.

Review Quotes

The Information Behavior of Wikipedia Fan Editors: A Digital (Auto)Ethnography is a must read for all information behavior researchers and those who teach information behavior. Paul A. Thomas very successfully weaves the almost-mysterious experiences of Wikipedia fan editors with the theoretical insights reported in information behavior studies. This book opens the way for innovative combinations of research methods by skillfully combining autoethnography with more conventional research methods. I would certainly make students and educators aware of this book to encourage innovative thinking on information behavior research and how to relate experiences to the theories of information behavior.

About the Author

Paul A. Thomas is a library specialist at the University of Kansas.