202 Country Report: Wikipedia

Wikipedia is used by millions of people every day, and it is one of the most accessible forms of digital data, information, and knowledge. One of the more interesting aspects of Wikipedia is that pages vary from country to country, so when using Wikipedia you are able to get a variety of perspectives on certain topics.

Switzerland is a very wealthy country with a booming economy, evidenced by their high GDP per capita. However, they are a small country, with a population sitting around just 8.7 million. Additionally, they are landlocked, surrounded by much larger countries such as Germany, France, and Italy. These countries influence Switzerland and Swiss media profoundly. This is visible when looking at different Wikipedia pages of Switzerland. The four official languages of Switzerland are German, Italian, French, and Romansh, and you are able to access Wikipedia pages about Switzerland in each of these languages. One thing that immediately stood out to me in the Wikipedia pages was a focus on Switzerland’s nature and landscape, as well as highlighting its impressive economy. Each page contains the same general contents, touching on different characteristics of the country like demographics, culture, etc., but there seemed to be an emphasis on the nature and economy chapters. Another thing that I observed was the lack of variation between the different pages. It did not appear that there were any biases or strong opinions in any of the pages. I believe this is due to Switzerland’s generally peaceful nature and stable political system. It is not a country with strong divides in opinion, and I believe this explains the similarities in the pages.

A visualization created to display Wikipedia statistics by country shows that about 50% of the Wikipedia pages being searched in Switzerland are written in German, followed by about 23% in English, 18% in French, and only about 5% in Italian. The visualization also shows page views per capita, and due to Switzerland’s wealth and connectivity, they boast an average of 95 million Wikipedia views a month, equating to roughly 11 page views per person, per month. However, although 95 million seems like a lot, Switzerland only makes up about 1.7% of Wikipedia searches throughout Europe. These numbers show that the Swiss population utilizes Wikipedia quite often compared to some other countries. For example, the average page views per person every month was about 9.5 in the United States. This could be due to Switzerland’s extremely low poverty rate and its overall wealth, allowing most of the population to have some form of access to technology and the internet.

Overall, German articles gain the most traction from Swiss Wikipedia users as over 60% of the Swiss population speaks German, and although the small country size results in less Wikipedia searches overall, the average page views per capita show that Switzerland frequently utilizes Wikipedia and that it has a strong presence within the country.

https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/animations/wivivi/wivivi.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_Switzerland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_countries_by_coverage