While I planned to write my website on the voting behavior of college students, things

didn’t quite pan out how I perceived them too. The prevalence of Wikipedia articles
detailing the voting behavior of college students is slim compared to scholarly articles. In
fact, I found that a page with that specific notion does not exist at all. But I wanted to
show you guys a way to research a topic with both Wikipedia and scholarly articles, so I
needed a decent Wikipedia page. So, to combat this issue I decided to change my website
to the topic of “Student Activism.” The topic change has proved to be for the best as
Wikipedia has a decent article on my new topic. The Wikipedia article “Student
Activism” details cases of student activism within 26 countries. A couple of those
countries are the United States, Argentina, and Japan. However, for a world with nearly
200 countries, 26 countries is simply not enough.

I have noticed during my research that while there appears to be much information out
there on student activism, a lot of it is embedded in scholarly resources not generally
available to the public at large. In fact, in order to open up the scholarly article I am
choosing to compare I had to log in to my University of Connecticut account first. This
alone seems to be one of the major dividing points between Wikipedia and scholarly
articles.

Meredith L. Weiss and Edward Aspinall’s article “Student Activism in Asia: Between
Protest and Powerlessness” details examples of activism in Asia and relays theories
regarding their impact. While this article is simpler to read than other political science
journals I have read, it still provides a heavy overdose of historical information. Many
scholarly articles relay their information in political jargon, graphs, and charts that are
difficult for the general public to read. Besides the initial abstract, finding the relevant
points of the argument within the article can be somewhat difficult. Usually, it is not until
the end of a scholarly article that any conclusive information is given. I find that this is
because their general audience is students and professors in like-minded fields. Thus, the
field tends to delve only further into political jargon as the ones in the field, well, speak
in jargon. Due to these factors, many scholarly articles are seemingly arcane.

Weiss and Aspinall published their article in the University of Minnesota Press. I know
of this university to have a prestigious department dedicated to political psychology,
therefore I know this article must be credible. However, I didn’t happen to see it
published in any specific political psychology journal. Anyways, I’ve found that issues
can arise in the differing levels of credibility between that of Wikipedia and that of
scholarly articles. Editors and writers of scholarly articles can conceivably be considered
trustworthy by readers if the institutions they come out of have already garnered a solid
amount of credibility. Many institutions indeed have done this, namely academic
institutions. If an institution in the past has produced notable work then I believe the
audience is likely to perceive their future work to be of that same prestige. Such scholarly
articles have held up to a certain level of prestige through their requirement of peer
reviewing. In order for any scholarly article to be published, many layers of peer
reviewing must be done first. And, the peer review editors hired come out of institutions
that have solidified their validity and trustworthiness.

While Wikipedia exists as a public domain in which anybody can contribute and pretty
much any topic can be presented, issues often arise because of that. While Wikipedia of
course has their own level of peer reviewing, it is not as extensive and trustworthy as a
scholarly article. I noticed this when reading a Wikipedia article the other day. While the
topic of the Wikipedia page currently escapes my mind, the words used to convey the
writers thoughts are not. In fact, this writer used many adjectives within their text. While
adjectives are not inherently bad, the way in which he utilized them in his article
happened to show bias. For example, he described Pakistan as being a “great” country.
Showing a bias such as this hurts credibility. Mistakes like this seem to be more prevalent
in Wikipedia articles than in scholarly articles. I find that due to the nature of such a wide
pool of writers and editors, Wikipedia’s credibility can at times dwindle. Despite their
platform as an encyclopedia, the bias that occurs because of its openness seems to affect
the public’s view of it.

Features of Wikipedia such as hyperlinks, lists, and orders of importance only help to
make it so much more dependable for society at large. Help sections and employed
editors are there to benefit their readers. Images help give a visual effect to the matter.
Their categories serve to divide topics into subtopics. And their lead section gives an
overall idea of the matter at hand. This all helps to make Wikipedia even more accessible.
The nature of such an open source allows for the kind of inclusivity that is needed to
make for a more informed public. But of course, openness and accessibility can always
come with a risk. Scholarly articles of course come with their own cons as well. One of
the sole matters that allow scholarly articles to be more accessible is their abstract, which
could be compared to Wikipedia’s lead section. The abstract gives an overview of the
article will speak of, but it still lacks important information. Therefore, in order to fully
under the article at hand reading a good amount of the article, at least the conclusion,
seems to be of much importance.