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I am a sociology student at George Mason University. I'm currently engaging in research on how students use Wikipedia. Below is a brief description of the trajectory of my research:
→ What makes Wikipedia a unique encyclopedia is that its content is generated by potentially anyone with Internet access. This bottom-up generated research (as opposed to the traditional top-down publication model dominated by media corporations) is often viewed as suspect, especially by academic faculty. A similar “moral/media panic” that Jean Burgess and Joshua Green attribute to YouTube in their book YouTube: Digital Media and Society Series can clearly be seen in Wikipedia: the uneasiness caused by content generated in “bottom-up” fashion with its "lawlessness and lack of expertise". This feared challenge to the “authentic” dissemination of knowledge ignores, or in the least downplays one of the sites key components: the ability for its users to edit and correct content. There is a notion that the predetermined modes of archiving and distributing knowledge trump a “participatory model” where users are able to democratically engage in knowledge production.←
Please contact me if you would like to discuss anything relating to this aspect of Wikipedia!