Episode
Who Gets to Write History? Wikibiases.org by Shlomit Aharoni Lir
- Podcast
- New Books Network
- Published
- Oct 2, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2260
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://newbooksnetwork.com
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Summary
Most of us use Wikipedia without thinking very much about it. A name comes up in conversation, an argument breaks out, or we suddenly need to know what happened in, for example, 1948—and within seconds, Wikipedia offers us a clean, confident answer. But who decided what that answer would be? Who chose which facts belonged in the opening paragraph and which could wait until paragraph fifteen? Who determined which sources were authoritative? My guest on this podcast is Dr. Shlomit Lir, a researcher at the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University who specializes in the politics of knowledge—the often invisible ways power influences what a society accepts as fact. Dr. Lir’s research began with questions about gender and participation on Wikipedia. She found that although the platform presents itself as open to everyone, not everyone feels equally welcome—or possesses equal influence—inside its editorial culture. Her latest project, WikiBiases, turns to English Wikipedia’s treatment of Israel, Zionism, Jewish history, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By examining revision histories, changes in terminology, patterns of sourcing, article structure, and the experiences of volunteer editors, she argues that bias rarely arrives as one spectacularly false statement. It develops gradually: a sentence disappears, a source is dismissed, a disputed interpretation moves into the opening paragraph, and a different account of history begins to look settled. The stakes extend far beyond Wikipedia. Its articles shape search results and influence journalists. They supply information to artificial-intelligence systems. If distorted information passes from Wikipedia into AI-generated material, and that material eventually returns as a source, we may be creating a hall of mirrors in w…