Es-tu Charlie? Doing Politics on Wikipedia

This chapter examines the representation of the slogan Je Suis Charlie (JSC) on Wikipedia. Drawing on corpus tools in addition to purely qualitative analytical tools led to the identification of several themes that recur throughout Wikipedia’s article on JSC as well as on the associated discussion pages. The Wikipedia article represents JSC as a globally-used symbol of freedom of speech and solidarity with victims of specific violent events. On the discussion pages, JSC receives a markedly different treatment, e.g. the debates focus on whether JSC – rather than symbolising freedom of speech – symbolises the freedom to discriminate against groups of people. Furthermore, the discussions focus on JSC as uniting the “West” only and not on JSC as a global phenomenon.