Disputes over Content of Wikipedia Articles Reflect a Country’s Geopolitical Instability

Disputes over the content of articles in the internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia can serve as an indicator for the political stability of a country. This was proposed based on a “Wikipedia Dispute Index” developed by researchers working at Heidelberg University. This index measures the frequency of pages linked to a country that are disputed by users of the online encyclopaedia. The ranking of countries based on this index is similar to other, much more complex indices relating, for example, to governance or the economy. To calculate the index, the scientists used methods similar to those applied to biological networks and applied them to the cross-linked information in Wikipedia.

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