Although the Earth’s surface average temperature is rising since 1850 due mostly to anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions, the existence and the attribution of global warming are sometimes disputed outside the peer-reviewed literature. This article investigates whether climate skeptics’ claims are admitted in Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. We carried a case study involving 93 global warming–related articles in Portuguese Wikipedia, analyzing their revision history from the perspective of Actor–Network Theory in two moments (2014 and 2017). We found that while “Aquecimento global” and other highly accessed articles support thoroughly anthropogenic climate change, it was not the case until 2012, long after the question had been settled by scientists; claims disputing the human influence on the climate remain in some articles. The enforcement of Wikipedia policies was crucial to ensure that anthropogenic climate change would prevail and that the collaborative encyclopedia would become a spokesperson for climate science.
AllenMRBarrosVRBroomeJet al. (2014) Climate Change 2014. Synthesis Report of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Geneva: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
2.
BuchemIDuckiAKhayatiSet al. (2014) Charting Diversity: Working Together Towards Diversity in Wikipedia. Berlin: Wikipedia Deutschland.
3.
CallonM (1986) Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In: LawJ (ed.) Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?London: Routledge, pp. 196–223.
4.
CookJNuccitelliDGreenSAet al. (2013) Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environmental Research Letters8(2): 7.
5.
CostaBEG (2014) As controvérsias da ciência na Wikipédia em português: o caso do aquecimento global. Doctoral Dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro.
6.
DarntonR (1979) The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.
EstevesB (2013) Ciência, política e controvérsia: a atribuição da mudança climática. In: Von LinsingenICorrêaRF (eds) Conhecer para Transformar III: Investigações sobre Ciência–Tecnologia–Sociedade na América Latina. Florianópolis, Brazil: Núcleo de Publicações/CED/UFSC, pp. 11–34.
9.
EstevesB (2016) Ativismo indoor. Piauí122: 11.
10.
EstevesBCukiermanH (2011) Consenso e controvérsia na Wikipédia: um olhar sociotécnico sobre o verbete ‘Aquecimento global’. In: Livro de Anais – Scientiarum Historia IV. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 19–21 October 2011, pp. 656–662. Rio de Janeiro, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
11.
EstevesBCukiermanH (2012) The climate change controversy through 15 articles of Portuguese Wikipedia. In: Research Papers. Wikipedia Academy 2012: Research and Free Knowledge. Berlin, Germany, 29 June – 1 July 2012. Berlin: Wikimedia Deutschland.
12.
EstevesBD’AndréaCFB (2011) A gripe suína na Wikipédia em português: análise da dinâmica de edições e qualificação do conteúdo de dois artigos. Intexto1(24): 192–208.
13.
GeigerRS (2011) The lives of bots. In: LovinkGTkaczN (eds) Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 78–93.
14.
GrandelleRMartinsE (2018) Emissões de gases de efeito estufa caem 2,3% em um ano no país, mostra relatório. O Globo, 21November. Available at: http://oglobo.globo.com
15.
HaiderJSundinO (2010) Beyond the legacy of enlightenment? Online Encyclopaedias as digital heterotopias. First Monday15(1). Available at: https://firstmonday.org/article/view/2744/2428
KaltenbrunnerALaniadoD (2012) There is no deadline—time evolution of Wikipedia discussions. In: Proceedings of the eighth annual international symposium on wikis and open collaboration—WikiSym ’12. Linz, Association for Computing Machinery. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2462941
18.
KitturASuhBPendletonBAet al. (2007) He says, she says: conflict and coordination in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the 2007 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, pp. 453–462. San Jose, CA: Association for Computing Machinery. Available at: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1240698
LatourB (1987) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
21.
LatourB (1999) Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
22.
LatourB (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23.
LatourB (2015) Face à Gaïa: Huit Conférences sur le Nouveau Régime Climatique. Paris: La Découverte.
24.
LimaLS (2014) As dinâmicas do conhecimento científico e tecnológico na era da web 2.0: Um estudo sobre a Wikipédia Lusófona. Master’s Thesis, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
MelloPCPradoA (2018) Cerrado: Agronegócio banca palestras de cético sobre mudança climática para ruralistas no Matopiba. Folha de S. Paulo, 22May. Available at: http://www.folha.com
27.
NiedererSVan DijckJ (2010) Wisdom of the crowd or technicity of content? Wikipedia as a sociotechnical system. New Media & Society12(8): 1368–1387.
28.
O’NeilM (2009) Cyber Chiefs: Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes. London: Pluto Press.
29.
O’NeilM (2011) Wikipedia and authority. In: LovinkGTkaczN (eds) Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 309–324.
30.
O’NeillSJBoykoffM (2010) Climate denier, skeptic, or contrarian?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America107(39): E151.
31.
OreskesNConwayEM (2010) Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury.
32.
OrtegaJFS (2009) Wikipedia: a quantitative analysis. Doctoral Dissertation, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid.
33.
PainterJAsheT (2012) Cross-national comparison of the presence of climate scepticism in the print media in six countries, 2007–10. Environmental Research Letters7: 044005.
34.
PowellJL (2016) Climate scientists virtually unanimous: anthropogenic global warming is true. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society35(5–6): 121–124.
35.
ReagleJMJr (2010) Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
36.
ShenXCheungCMLeeMK (2013) Trust in students’ information adoption from Wikipedia. British Journal of Educational Technology44(3): 502–517.
Van Der VeldenM (2011) When knowledges meet: Wikipedia and other stories from the contact zone. In: LovinkGTkaczN (eds) Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 236–257.
39.
VenturiniT (2010) Diving in magma: how to explore controversies with actor-network theory. Public Understanding of Science19(3): 258–273.
40.
VenturiniT (2012) Building on faults: how to represent controversies with digital methods. Public Understanding of Science21(7): 796–812.
41.
WatsonRT (ed.) (2001) Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report of the IPCC Third Assessment Report. Geneva: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
42.
WeltevredeEBorraE (2016) Platform affordances and data practices: the value of dispute on Wikipedia. Big Data & Society3(1): 1–16.
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
