Writing the World in 301 Languages: A Political Geography of the Online Encyclopedia Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free-access, free content Internet encyclopedia created in 2001. One key characteristic of the encyclopedia is its linguistic plurality. Wikipedia consists of 301 language versions, called Wikipedias. Differences between them are, however, huge, each with its own content and editing practices (although individual editors can contribute to different language editions). After a short presentation of the history and the organization of Wikipedia, this chapter focuses on its geographies. It first deals with its geographical reach and then moves to geographical imaginations and the representation of places, and it examines how these geopolitical representations can diverge between different linguistic versions of Wikipedia.