Kanye West Through Wikipedia’s Lens
Controversy is attention whether it is good or bad, Kanye West has been in the news many times throughout the years equally so as he is such a polarizing public figure. From taking the mic from Taylor Swift as she won an Emmy to creating a multi-million dollar brand seemingly overnight he has risen and equally so has fallen as the years have gone on. In recent memory, he has been in the news once again stirring controversy for anti-Semitic remarks seemingly ruining his legacy and Wikipedia editors have been having a field day trying to keep up with each change, controversy, and overall story.
When initially comparing different Wikipedia sources we can see that Kanye has his own dedicated fanbase that has taken initiative to create their own fan-made Wikipedia site allowing us to look at multiple perspectives to see how much attention each site has as well as allowing us to help decipher how the different information sources overlap, show bias, and contrast. We can see that the fan made (shown in orange) wasn’t created until 2011 and has significantly less data than the Wikipedia Kanye West page (seen in blue). Looking deeper into the deep blue lines these are times when Wikipedia’s Kanye West page was being trolled/attacked by someone with editing power deleting large bits of text which then is restored by other editors. This in comparison to the fandom page which never receives massive trolling attacks is something that we can take note of since the fandom page is managed by a smaller amount of people who obviously appreciate Kanye West, his music, and his philanthropies. This helps to create insight into the two sites and how they are managed as well as how more people having the power to edit creates the potential for large changes and for the griefing of different pages to occur.
Since Kanye West is a globally wide public figure looking at his popularity in different languages Wikipedia helps to create a better understanding of his popularity as seen throughout the globe. This was done by looking solely at Wikipedia in different languages to see the total page views in English, Arabic, French, and Chinese. We can see that being predominantly Kanye is large with English Speaking Wikipedia users but something that was interesting was the French-speaking Wikipedia users being so prominent among the other language pages. Looking at the data we also see that whenever there is a spike of information it occurs for all pages which is interesting as it shows that different days when Kanye was very involved in the news created a lot of buzz for all Wikipedia pages regardless of language. We can use context to find out what these different spikes were as well with 2020’s spikes being when Kanye was running for president and the recent spikes in 2022 being in light of the anti-Semitic remarks and controversy that Kanye has been getting into. We can see that different spikes impact the different languages differently with China soaring to English’s baseline when Kanye was declaring for the presidency.
We can also see the gradual growth in sources for Kanye West’s Wikipedia page with it gaining over a thousand links over the page’s 18-year-long lifespan. With each different new source, business deal, album release, etc it continues to grow with it doubling in the span of 5 years as he grew more and more prominent in the limelight.
When circling back to the comparison of hundreds of different users working on the page in comparison to the smaller fandom Wikipedia page which only received devoted editing from a smaller community the Wikipedia page has had over 5000 editors which is over 100 times the amount the fandom page had. This helps to explain the difference in pure content that is on the page as well as the potential for trolling to occur. Someone who is so polarizing and who is known to get in the news for both good and bad publicity is sure to receive all sorts of attention indirectly in forms like this where users who may not agree with what Kanye does and as a result take initiative in their own way. We can see though that as time progresses the amount of data, news, and information on Kanye and his escapades continue to grow to help people around the world to better understand his story through the peer-reviewed site.
