The Wikipedia Global Consciousness Index: a measurement of awareness and meaning of the world as one place

Abstract

To supplement current globalization indexes, I propose a new index, the Wikipedia Global Consciousness Index (WikiGCI). The WikiGCI, defined as a measure of awareness and meaning of the world as one place, is founded on Robertson's [(1992). Globalization: Social theory and global culture. Sage] suggestion of global consciousness. Available indexes that measure globalization rely on network definitions for their theoretical frameworks and count objects crossing borders. For the WikiGCI, ideas serve as the empirical units to understand global consciousness. The WikiGCI is based on articles edited in Wikipedia that express ideas on a world level. By geolocating IP address edits to Wikipedia articles, I identified the top 100 articles edited in the most countries (global articles). With this research, I first analyse how global articles affirm a global consciousness as well as define its meaning. Second, I construct an index of this consciousness and measure each country's score on it. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.