Research:Global South Technology Survey/Methodology

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The methodology for the construction of this research process is divided into four stages: Assessment, Interviews, Proposal, Internalization.

Assessment

The Wikimedia Movement has officially 183 organizations with some level of affiliation:

• 38 chapters;
• 141 user groups;
• 2 thematic organizations;
• 2 allied organizations.

They can be divided into categories:

By region

• 50 are from or act in Asia,
• 45 are from or act in Europe,
• 29 are from or act in Africa,
• 27 are from or act in America,
• 2 are from or act in Oceania,
• 30 have multi continental or global actions or do not have a defined origin region.

By geopolitical divisions

• 80 are from or act in the Global North,
• 74 are from or act in the Global South,
• 29 have multinational or global actions or do not have a defined origin region.

From the Global South organizations, we have selected 36 that have received Wikimedia Community Funds in the last 3 years or are financially independent:

• 16 from or act in Africa;
• 11 from or act in America;
• 9 from or act in Asia;
• 8 chapters;
• 27 user groups;
• 1 allied organization.

We have consulted with Jessica Stephenson, from the Let's Connect, to gather which ones had technological aspects in their activity reports and to connect with other non-affiliates Wikimedia organizations from the Global South or act in its regions.

Interviews

We have conducted semi structured interviews with the aforementioned organizations to identify their plans and desires for the future of the socio-technical infrastructure of the Wikimedia Movement, specially about these topics:

1. Mobile editing and reading
2. Accessibility (visual, physical, language-related)
3. Technical skills and technological capacity
4. AI/ML generated content
5. Definition and measurement of metrics of impact
6. Technology Council
7. Regulation and real world interferences
8. Internet access and equitable participation and representation
9. Collaboration within affiliates and individuals
10. Collaboration with Open Source initiatives and Big Tech

Proposal

After the interviews, we transcribed and compiled them. At the same time, we continued to gather and read diverse sources of knowledge about the topics we initially proposed. These readings formed the basis of our hypotesis tags, which we would later test against the interviews. The main literature we compiled was comprised of the following documents:

• van AMSTEL, F. M. C. (January 2020). "A ideologia do solucionismo tecnológico". Usabilidoido (in Brazilian Portuguese (Q750553)). Retrieved September 2023.  CS1 maint: Unrecognized language (link)
• GERTNER, J. (July 2023). "Wikipedia's Moment of Truth". The New York Times Magazine (Q3028269). Retrieved September 2023. 
• HARE, J. (August 2023). "Three new concepts for organizing work on Wikipedia: Workspaces, Buckets, and Sprints". James Hare. Retrieved September 2023. 
• KUBZANSKY, M. (2023). "Reimagining Our High-Tech World". Stanford Social Innovation Review (Q7598793) 21: 2633. doi:10.48558/DKKQ-2K86. Retrieved September 2023. 
• SENGUPTA, A.; BOUTERSE, S.; ALLMAN, K. (November 2018). "Build an internet for, and from, us all". Nature (Q180445) 563 (7733): S147–S148. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-07506-7. Retrieved September 2023. 

The 4 tags of our hypotesis were Risks and potentials of Artificial Intelligence, Participatory democracy and equitable governance, Biased practices and content and User experience.

We then tagged the interviews and made a goodness-of-fit test, which confirmed our hypotesis, with the expansion of User experience into two other tags: 'Editing and reading on mobile devices' and 'Resources documentation'.

We extracted excerpts of the interviews that related to those 6 tags and compiled them into a spreadsheet, totaling 85 excerpts that were analyzes, merged and prioritized. Of these compiled excerpts, we extracted 10 purposeful declarations for the Global Majority's tech priorities and drafted a proposal document that is now being appreciated by the Global Majority communities.

Internalization

After the draft of the proposal is complete, the organizations will go through their own internalization of the document and discuss if they want to co-sign the report, which could take the form of a joint manifesto.

Notes