Nathaniel Tkacz is a Swedish-Australian scholar of digital media who is currently Reader at the University of Warwick. His research on Wikipedia has been influential in media studies and organisational theory. Tkacz has described his work as investigating "the political, economic and organisational dimensions of technology, with a specific focus on networked and digital forms".Nathaniel Tkacz (Assistant Professor).
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. Retrieved 2 January 2015.

Education and academic career

Tkacz has bachelor's degrees in arts and commerce from

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has a ...

and a PhD in culture and communication from

The University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

. He is currently Reader at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

, where he has worked since 2012.

Research on Wikipedia

Tkacz's research on Wikipedia has been influential in the fields of internet research and digital media studies. His monograph ''Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness'' (2015) has been cited in over 200 scholarly articles and books. In the book Tkacz argues that the openness of Wikipedia in allowing anybody to edit articles is countered by a "closure" where community debates determined what is excluded from the encyclopaedia. Two controversies are analysed: the deletion of an article about an artistic project, and the debate over whether to include images of Muhammed on Wikipedia. As Johan Söderberg wrote in a review of the book for the journal ''Science, Technology and Human Values'', Tkacz's point is not that Wikipedia enthusiasts should be reprimanded for being insufficiently open. Tkacz's point is the opposite: openness always and inevitably presupposes closeness." In another review, Fabio Rojas notes that Tkacz contributes to institutional logic theory by developing the idea of forking in software development to apply to organisations. Rojas sees this combination of a cultural studies approach with organisational theory as being particularly useful. The book received a number of other positive reviews, including in ''

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

''. In 2021, Tkacz was awarded an

Australian Research Council The Australian Research Council (ARC) is the primary non-medical research funding agency of the Australian Government, distributing more than in grants each year. The Council was established by the ''Australian Research Council Act 2001'', ...

Discovery Grant with two collaborators: Heather Ford (the project leader) and Tamson Pietsch. The project is titled ''Wikipedia and the nation’s story: Towards equity in knowledge production'', and aims to understand how Wikipedia "produces knowledge in its coverage of Australian historic events". The project is funded from 2022 through 2024.

Research on data and dashboards

Tkacz's other main research area is data studies, which has culminated in his book ''Being With Data: The Dashboarding of Everyday Life,'' published by Polity Press in 2022. He has argued for a situated approach to studying data, which has been described as part of a "growing range of methods used to study data practices in situ and as they affect the operation of data in everyday and organisational contexts", and as exploring how "data ‘intervene’ in the unfolding of actual decision-making processes".

Selected publications

*''Being With Data: The Dashboarding of Everyday Life'' (Polity Press, 2022)
''Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader''
Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2011. (Edited with

Geert Lovink Geert Lovink (born 1959, Amsterdam) is the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, whose goals are to explore, document and feed the potential for socio-economical change of the new media field through events, publications and open ...

) *''Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness''.

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...

, 2015.''Wikipedia and the Politics of Openness''.
The University of Chicago Press Books. Retrieved 2 January 2015.

References

External links

Nate Tkacz at academia.eduTkacz on openness.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tkacz, Nathaniel Academics of the University of Warwick Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Monash University alumni University of Melbourne alumni