Editing platform politics on Wikipedia: A longitudinal study 2002-2024: The history of user-creation of Swedish political parties’ Wikipedia articles

The purpose of this study is to contribute to knowledge about the connection between platform studies and comparative party politics. More specifically, to gain new knowledge about the history of user-creation about Swedish political parties on Wikipedia. This study maps the user-created history of Swedish political parties on the platform Wikipedia over a twenty-year period. Users’ contributions construct articles by making edits (N=20,906). The study focuses on whether users edit political articles differently, in which order political parties appeared, the relation of election years (heightened political activity) to frequencies of user edits, and whether the overall evolution of content on political parties’ articles is in a process of growth, standstill or decline. The results show that parties without government representation have the highest frequency of editing when related to parties’ political support in elections. This tendency is stronger on the far-right side of the political scale. The Sweden Democrats was the first party on Wikipedia (2002) and within six months most parties followed. Elections were initially related to higher edit frequencies. Users’ editing peaked the first 15 years, but has then merged on a lower level. The conclusions suggest that when studying this type of political platform user engagement, the following factors matter: The age of the platform, whether the party holds a dominant position, whether the party's support is increasing, whether the party is excluded from governmental collaboration, whether the party has a far-out political position on the left-right scale, and finally, whether the party is a right-wing party.