Wikipedia doesn't set out to play favourites. But when a made-up Melbourne suburb has more history than real Australian places, something is shaping what gets written. Who - or what - decides which Australian places matter on Wikipedia? Hosts Heather Ford and Francesca Sidoti go looking, through a map of 35,000 places, a street corner in Penrith, and a fight over one island's name. How is Wikipedia biased, and why? The answer will surprise you. VoicesHeather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press. Dr Francesca Sidoti is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the ARC Discovery project ‘Wikipedia and the nation’s story: towards equity in knowledge production’ in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dr Michael Falk is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Studies at the University of Melbourne, and is a computational literary scholar, data scientist, speaker and writer. In all his work, he aims to combine the creativity of the arts with the rigour and precision of data science. Research linksAustralian places and WikipediaMap of Australian places on Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025) Map showing Edit intensity of Australian place articles: English Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025) Full report: How Australian places are represented on Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025) We analysed 35,000 Wikipedia entries about Australian places. Some of them sanitise history (The Conversation: 2024) Erinsborough Wikipedia Page Penrith Wikipedia page K'gari Wikipedia page Bias and WikipediaCan History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past by Roy Rosenzweig (The Journal of American History Volume 2006) Wikipedia's known unknowns (The Guardian 2009) The earliest geographical analyses of Wikipedia’s geographical biases is described Professor Mark Graham. ‘Anyone can edit’, not everyone does: Wikipedia’s infrastructure and the gender gap ( Social Studies of Science 2017) How Wikipedia’s infrastructure introduces new and less visible sources of gender disparity, by Heather Ford and Judy Wajcman. Who Gets To Be Notable And Who Doesn't: Gender Bias On Wiki (NPR All Things Considered 2021) On Wikipedia, gender inequality is hiding in plain sight. Of more than a million and a half biographies - that's on the English-language version - fewer than 19% are about women. A recent study by Francesca Tripodi brings some new insight into why that is. Demographic disparity in Wikipedia coverage: a global perspective (EPJ Data Sci. 2025)Even though people identifying as female and non-binary genders have been better represented in terms of the number of Wikipedia language editions over time, and they are currently better covered than males, current global coverage of people on Wikipedia still shows disparities in both gender and geographical location of biographical subjects in various dimensions. Wikipedia editorsWho is contributing to Wikimedia projects? (Wikimedia Foundation, nd) The Wikipedia “Change the Stats” page that collates research into the Wikipedia editor base as a baseline for increasing the diversity of Wikipedia editors. Community Insights Report (Wikimedia Foundation, 2020) A survey with 2500 Wikimedians looking at their demographics, social and technological experiences. Findings from the survey included: Wikimedia contributors are 87% male. Almost half live in Europe and one-fifth in Northern America, as compared to 9.7% and 4.8% of the global population.Fewer than 1% of Wikipedia’s editor base in the U.S. identify as Black or African American.Although women were still markedly underrepresented among contributors, there was a modest increase in women contributors between 2019 (11.5%) and 2020 (15.0%). Further reading“Finding Eliza: power and colonial storytelling” by Larissa Behrendt (2016) “Finding Eliza” exhibition at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery until 16 August 2026 ClipsJimmy Wales on bias: Lex Fridman podcast 19 June 2023 Comedian Guy Williams on visiting Rottnest Island Herbs French Letter World Heritage Fraser Island officially restored to Indigenous name, K'gari, supported by public (ABC News 7 June 2023) CreditsThe executive producer of this series is Heather Ford. The series is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke. Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti. Story consultant is Rachael Cusick. Sound by John Jacobs. Thanks for feedback from Sarah Gilbert, Regina Botros, Celine Teo-Blockey, Siobhan Moylan, Lachlan A Court, Zlata Maltceva, Rosa Ellen, and Kate Lawrence. All That We Touch artwork by Alexandra Morris. Episode tiles by Jane Curtis. Bell music composition by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary. Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert. It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia. wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’. Find out more at wikihistories.net TranscriptsWikipedia and Australia: the bias in the map Transcript Word doc Wikipedia and Australia: the bias in the map Transcript PDF
