Wikiturfing is a portmanteau of

astroturfing Astroturfing is the deceptive practice of hiding the Sponsor (commercial), sponsors of an orchestrated message or organization (e.g., political, economic, advertising, religious, or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from ...

and

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

, also called wikiwashing as a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of Wikipedia and

whitewashing Whitewash is a paint-like covering of hydrated lime or a cheap white paint. Whitewash or whitewashing may also refer to: Racist practices * Whitewashing (beauty), modifying the skin tones of photographs of nonwhite people in mass media * Whitew ...

. The term refers to an unethical

reputation management Reputation management, refers to the Social influence, influencing, controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's reputation. It is a marketing technique used to modify a person's or a company's reputation in a positive way. ...

technique employing Wikipedia to shape opinion. It has been labeled as "unethical and abusive"; an exploitative practice of an " extractive

sharing economy The sharing economy is a socio-economic system whereby consumers share in the creation, production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods, and services. These systems take a variety of forms, often leveraging information technology and the ...

", and a

disinformation Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...

technique. According to

Mayo Fuster Morell Mayo Fuster Morell (born 1975) is a social researcher. Her research has focused on sharing economy, social movements, online communities and digital Commons, frequently using participatory action research and method triangulation. She has be ...

, a scholar of the

, Another scholar, in the context of protest in modern China, writes: Legal scholar Jim Chen noted the irony of the term "wikiturfing" being itself deleted from Wikipedia in 2006, stating "If Wikipedia dumps this piece of wikiturfing, as appears likely from the Wikipedia community's discussion of this entry, the last redoubt of wikiturfing (the term, not the practice) will be Wikidumper.Org." Investigative journalists have created a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

, WikiWash, to track potential wikiwashing activities.

References

Sources

* * * * * {{citation, title=WikiWash Lets You Track Wikipedia Edits in Real Time, work= Adweek, first= Karen , last=Fratti, date=November 7, 2014, url=http://www.adweek.com/digital/wikiwash-lets-track-wikipedia-edits-real-time/

External links

WikiWash
investigation tool, metronews.ca Internet manipulation and propaganda Wikipedia

Further reading

See also

References

Sources

External links