Gender, power and emotions in the collaborative production of knowledge: A large-scale analysis of Wikipedia editor conversations

Jana Gallus,Sudeep Bhatia

doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.02.003

Abstract

This paper studies the conversations behind the operations of a large-scale, online knowledge production community: Wikipedia. We investigate gender differences in the conversational styles (emotionality) and conversational domain choices (controversiality and gender stereotypicality of content) among contributors, and how these differences change as we look up the organizational hierarchy. In the general population of contributors, we expect and find significant gender differences, whereby comments and statements from women are higher-valenced, have more affective content, and are in domains that are less controversial and more female-typed. Importantly, these differences diminish or disappear among people in positions of power: female authorities converge to the behavior of their male counterparts, such that the gender gaps in valence and willingness to converse on controversial content disappear. We find greater sorting into topics according to their gender stereotypicality. We discuss mechanisms and implications for research on gender differences, leadership behavior, and conversational phenomena arising from such large-scale forms of knowledge production.

Highlights

Collaborative work would be unthinkable absent people’s ability to converse in order to share information and to coordinate and motivate efforts
Understanding whether systematic differences between men and women persist as we look up the organizational hierarchy is important because it speaks to whether gender differences found in the general population are absolute, or whether they may have been partly confounded with related differences in status and power (Johnson & Helgeson, 2002; Watson, 1994)
We typically run two sets of regressions: one with variables obtained using our word-frequency averaging (WFA) method and one with variables obtained using our embeddings method. This means, for example, that our analysis of a comment’s valance, as measured by our WFA method, will involve controlling for the valence, arousal, and gender-typedness of the article that is the topic of the thread using the WFA method

Summary

Introduction

Collaborative work would be unthinkable absent people’s ability to converse in order to share information and to coordinate and motivate efforts. Conversations influence work, for instance through their effects on productivity and creativity (Huang, Gino, & Galinsky, 2015; Wu, Waber, Aral, Brynjolfsson, & Pentland, 2008). Expressions of emotions in natural collaborative production processes offer an important window into the psychology of work. They can inform our understanding of the differential motivations and experiences of various subgroups of workers, and how their presence might influence the broader organizational climate and culture (Cross & Madson, 1997; Schein, 2004). Women in positions of power are one important subgroup of workers on which our knowledge is still limited, largely due to the unavailability of data

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