Mr Neville Borg will be delivering a Research Seminar entitled 'Wiki activity in Malta: Building a collaborative knowledge base for the Maltese cultural heritage' on Friday 19 May from 12:15 to 13.30 in Room 414, MaKS Building, Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences.
Entrance is free but a place needs to be reserved by sending an email to info.maks@um.edu.mt
Students and academics are cordially invited to attend.
Abstract
The presentation will explore the development of Wikipedia and other Wiki projects over the past years, particularly in light of the online changing online media landscape and ongoing debates about the veracity of online news, and the influence of media on public and political discourse. Examples of the Wiki movement shaping or reacting to international socio-political debates will be discussed, posing questions about the role of Wikipedia in various sectors of society, ranging from media and information dissemination, to education, preservation of collective memory and knowledge-transfer.
The work of Wikimedia Community Malta (WCM), a Wiki User Group based in Malta, will be presented within this light, exploring how WCM aims to encourage further local and International collaboration in preservation and dissemination of Malta’s cultural heritage.
Speaker profile
Neville Borg holds a BA (Hons) degree in Sociology from the University of Malta and an MA in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College. He has carried out research with a variety of fields, ranging from social equality to economics, and has held research posts at the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality and the University of Surrey, among others. He is currently a researcher within the Valletta 2018 Foundation’s Research Department, which coordinates and implements a number of research studies related to Malta’s cultural sector.
He is currently reading for a Ph.D. in Digital Media at the University of Hull, with a topic focusing on the intersection between shared memory, cultural identity and digital media, specifically Wikipedia. This research has led him to co-found Wikimedia Community Malta, a voluntary organisation working to encourage the uptake of Wiki activity in Malta, particularly within the field of cultural heritage.