By GB News (World News) | Created at 2024-11-28 19:06:31 | Updated at 2024-11-28 21:47:37
2 hours ago
A new study has accused Wikipedia of having a left wing bias with a tendency to associate those ideologically right-wing more negatively.
Academic researcher David Rozado used AI software to analyse the sentiment behind political statements in Wikipedia articles on public figures.
The study used a wide range of English language articles from US senators and Supreme Court justices to every British MP and political leaders across the Western world.
On average the English-language edition was more likely to associate people on the right more negatively, with emotions such as "anger" and "disgust", than those on the Left, which were more commonly associated with "joy."
Wikipedia has been accused of showing a bias
Getty
Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage
Reuters
It is not the first time the website has been questioned about its impartiality. In 2018 a Harvard study found Wikipedia articles were more biased towards democratic views than republicans on topics within US politics than they were in Encyclopædia Britannica.
There has been widespread discussion been made of the website’s perceived support of Biden, both in playing down his son Hunter’s controversies and heavy-editing across the website to downplay whether the US was indeed going in a recession under his watch.
Wikipedia’s own co-founder, Larry Sanger, who has accused the site of being taken over by left-leaning volunteers.
Last year, he told The Telegraph: "Wikipedia has, just like academia, tended to drive away people on the right,” he says, “because conservatives tend to self-select out of communities that are deeply hostile to them."
Larry Sanger has said the website tends to drive away people on the right
Getty
Wikipedia’s other co-founder, Jimmy Wales, who is chief executive of its parent company, the Wikimedia Foundation, has insisted the website is not "woke" and its "not true" to suggest it has become a standard bearer for left-wing causes.
There have also been questions about the legitimacy of Rozado's most recent report.
A piece published in the Signpost, Wikipedia’s community-edited weekly online newspaper, notes that Rozado’s study has neither been peer reviewed nor featured in an academic publication.
Instead, it was published on the conservative right-wing think tank The Manhattan Institute, which Tilman Bayer, the report’s author and an editor since 2003, suggests didn’t find the results "too objectionable."
GB News has approached Wikipedia for a comment.
