Wikis. Taking stock of a research field and outlining an integrative analytical framework.

Pentzold, C., Seidenglanz, S., Fraas, C. & Ohler, P. (2007). Wikis. Bestandsaufnahme eines Forschungsfeldes und Skizzierung eines integrativen Analyserahmens. Medien und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 55(1), 61-79.

Wikis as social software and a form of network-based collaborative work mark a decisive step in the recent history of the Web. In terms of functionality and popularity, they are already leaving older generations of Web offerings behind and paving the way for new forms of virtual interaction. This article opens up this field of research, which is fruitful for communication and media studies, by providing an overview of previous wiki research, especially with regard to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Furthermore, he outlines the beginnings of an integrative analytical framework that conceptualizes the online encyclopedia Wikipedia as a social system from a media linguistic and media sociological perspective. In this context, the state of the art in research is presented in terms of structuring theory and genre classification, action- and consensus-oriented approaches, and information technology approaches, as well as work on information quality, user classifications, and motivations.