Wiki-politics of notable deaths: Structures of inequality in the global digital deathscape

Drawing on scholarship that conceives Wikipedia as collective memory, in this paper we set out to examine the digital politics of public remembrance underpinning the online encyclopedia’s necrology section. Systematic data were collected from the English language edition of Wikipedia’s “recent deaths” notices from January 2001 to December 2020 (N = 95,400). Statistical analyses performed on this dataset revealed several structures of inequality shaping the online encyclopedia’s section of “notable deaths”. The results indicate, first, a Western cultural hegemony in terms of the nationality of those whose deaths are remembered in Wikipedia’s necrology section. Second, the paper documented a prevailing hegemonic masculinity epitomized in a stark gender differential. Third, the paper examined the social gradient theory of mortality by comparing the life expectancy of Wikipedia’s notable deceased with the general population and found empirical support for this hypothesis only in non-Western countries characterized by lower levels of income.