166 Country Report: Wikipedia
Nicole Sanchez
Both the Saudi Arabian Wikipedia page and the English Wikipedia page cover all the basics about Saudi Arabia, including its general history and geography. However, the main difference I noticed is that the Saudi Arabian page goes much more in-depth about their country. It has tabs that relate to sports, national symbols, transportation, and interestingly enough a tab to the country’s working calendar and holiday times. The Saudi Arabian page also describes Saudi Arabia as a very politically stable and thriving country. At the same time, the Western version mentions their economic success but also directly addresses Saudi Arabia’s lack of human rights and overall abuse of power over its citizens. Another thing I found interesting is that there wasn’t a specific tab for Religion on the Saudi Arabian page. Under the Culture section, there was a small paragraph describing Islam as being the main religion and althogh they were other religions in Saudi Arabia in order to become a citizen you must be Muslim and that there is no law protecting the freedom of religion. I would’ve assumed that there would be a lot more information on Islam and its restrictions but it’s more just heavily implied that everyone would already know about Islam.
I couldn’t find much regarding the total usage of Wikipedia in Saudi Arabia. However, Wikipedia has been involved in several scandals regarding the validity of its contributors. In reference to my Global News post, the Saudi Arabian government has had its agents act as independent contributors to Wikipedia pages as a method to censor any talk that might shed a bad light on its government as well as spread false information about the country’s current political state. In fact, Wikipedia banned all Saudi Arabian editors, and Saudi Arabia even imprisoned two Wikipedia editors for speaking badly about the government. In the discussion section of the English page, there is a warning that the neutrality of this page may be disputed. There is also a lot of back and forth between editors saying that no information has been violated and others saying that it definitely has been biased and users should be aware of such infiltration. The last edit to the page was February 6, 2023, so although there was been several disputes the page is still actively being updated/changed. Surprisingly, there is also a lot of talk that Saudi Arabia is often bashed upon on the English Wikipedia page. Many argue that despite their lack of efforts to address human rights issues it still has a beautiful culture and the political agendas should just be mentioned under the politics tab. Overall, it seems that the validity of the information on both Wikipedia pages are questionable due to personal political motivation and outside influences.
Sources:
