Making history. Representing “Bloody Sunday” in Wikipedia

Abstract

Abstract – With web users increasingly taking on the role of producers/consumers (prosumers) of information, thanks to the technological affordances of social media, the representation of historical events may be subject to a number of centrifugal forces which allow virtually any and every user have their say. Thus, while the academia, the traditional media, and other institutions have apparently lost part of their privileged positions as information content providers and source of monologic accounts, the patterns of negotiation and conflict inherent in any representation of events is foregrounded and made visible through the new media. It is against this background that the present article explores the impact of Web 2.0 technologies on the representation of particularly controversial events through platforms devoted to the sharing of User Generated Content like Wikipedia. More specifically, the article provides a detailed critical analysis of the Wikipedia entry for “Bloody Sunday”, through a reading of all subsequent revisions by individual users. The methodology consists in applying Critical Discourse Analysis to the revised versions which make up the so-called “history” of this specific entry. Each stage of editorial change has been analyzed with a focus on major changes, i.e changes not simply involving correction of typos, format or other minor superficial changes. For each editorial change the resulting version is discussed in terms of transitivity (processes, participants, circumstances) as well as intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Particular attention is devoted also to edits that lay bare strategies of (de)legitimation of in-groups and out-groups. The preliminary results of the investigation seem to suggest that the textual and discoursal negotiation taking place in the history of this specific Wikipedia entry reflects - but also reconstructs, reshapes and to some extent re-enacts - the real-life conflict, and provides a case in point to reconsider the role played by new technology in making conflicting perspectives in the representation of reality visible and accessible worldwide.