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Research:Investigating Neurodivergent Wikimedian Experiences

Created
20:00, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
Duration:  2024-June – 2025-March
Grant ID: G-RS-2402-15227

This page documents a research project in progress.
Information may be incomplete and change as the project progresses.
Please contact the project lead before formally citing or reusing results from this page.


This project focused on exploring discussions about being neurodivergent and participating in Wikimedia projects. There were no existing studies on neurodivergent Wikimedians at the time of this study, although there are numerous discussions about the representation of this potentially vast population in public forums.

The research question was: what topics are discussed in existing public conversations about being neurodivergent and participating in Wikimedia projects? Researchers conducted a content analysis of existing public discussions about neurodivergent Wikimedians to investigate present discourse. To enrich this work we explored important methodological and ethical considerations for the design of future studies on neurodivergent Wikimedians, given that studying demographic groups requires careful planning and risk considerations.

Anyone interested in understanding the makeup of the Wikimedia community and supporting contributors, including organizers and technical support might be interested in this work. The potential impact of this work is to increase understanding of how to support Wikimedian wellbeing, including through understanding the challenges faced by neurodivergent Wikimedians. This work may also contribute to our understanding of neurodivergent peopleʼs experiences in work and volunteering contexts. In addition, this work may contribute to our understanding of neurodiversity and online culture, and research methods of studying the demographics of international, networked communities.

Methods

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A content analysis of existing discussions about participating in Wikimedia and being neurodivergent was conducted. Content analysis is a qualitative method to study discourse involving the creation of a corpus, followed by qualitative coding.[1] A log of search terms to collect data will be reported in forthcoming published work. The corpus was created by querying administrative pages across English Wikipedia, Commons, and Meta, including essays, talk pages, user pages, and policies. Due to many forms of interaction on Wikimedia platforms, threaded discussions, user boxes and categories are all content formats that may be included in the corpus. This data was deemed important to understand Wikimedians on their own terms in forums where community issues are discussed.

The authors used grounded theory for the analysis of the corpus, which involves creating qualitative codes based on keyword usage, subjects discussed, framings, and other emergent properties in the corpus, and labeling data items with these codes.[2] The qualitative data analysis software used is Taguette. Then, researchers synthesize underlying patterns. We interpreted the results with care towards intersectional forms of marginalization and biasing that may appear in myriad ways at any point in the research process. Given the subject area, we looked out for comments that relate to concerns about disclosure, non-disclosure and masking[3] and how these might impact Wikimedia community awareness of the experiences and representation of neurodivergent contributors.

The novelty of this research area and the complexities of studying demographic groups, required time and care spent investigating methods, potential bias and risks, and ways to involve the community in representing themselves. We created actionable recommendations for future research design that might be useful for researchers and movement advocates designing future studies about neurodivergence in online communities.

Timeline

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  • June-July, 2024 - Data Collection
  • August-December, 2024 - Analysis, write research publication
  • January-February, 2025 - Research publication finalizing for submission
  • Spring 2025 - Aim for publication, contingent on peer review feedback and journal review timeline(s)

Expected output

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Policy, Ethics and Human Subjects Research

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This study did not include the participation of human research subjects. Risks included creating unwanted or negative public attention on the population studied. We dialogued with the Wikimedia community and other researchers at Wikimania and other forums as this project develops, to expand our awareness of potential risks. To protect the privacy of the authors of the public textual data analyzed, we did not use direct quotations or usernames in related publications. Any public data set created for this project would only include textual data sources designed with the public in mind, such as Wikipedia essays, rather than Talk page messages or other internal, community-oriented discussions. Authors have excluded items not clearly intended for public audiences.

Results / presentations

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Links to presentations, blog posts, or other ways in which the work is disseminated will be updated on an ongoing basis.

Additional Resources

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Contact

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Contact Co-PI Dorothy Howard with any questions about the study: dorohoward@gmail.com

References

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  1. ↑ Krippendorff, Klaus (2018). Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology (4 ed.). Sage Publications. 
  2. ↑ Clarke, Adele E. (2005). Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Turn. Sage Publications. 
  3. ↑ Davidson, Joyce; Henderson (2010-03-01). "‘Coming out’ on the spectrum: autism, identity and disclosure". Social & Cultural Geography. 
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