The Web of Knowledge: Encylopedias and Authority in the Digital Age (Digital Media and Society)

The encyclopedia has expanded in scope, scale, and popularity in the digital age.Wikipedia in particular serves as a gateway to information and a flashpoint for disputes over authority, expertise, and cultural perspectives.This innovative book, which includes a foreword by the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, traces the historical roots of digital encyclopedias in the early development of information science and cyberculture.It identifies trends within their digital evolution to reveal a complex web of relationships between media technology, knowledge, and culture.Using several case studies, Alevizou analyses how major technological shifts have impacted the publishing models, governance, and creative labour of reference works; the evolution of the genre and the modalities of representation and access; and the range of uses and symbolic meanings of encyclopedias as diverse nodes within broader information economies, as commodities and as public goods.Filled with rich empirical insi