How Wikipedia learned a word

Data and analysis of “microaggression” edits

On October 12th, 2007, the microaggression article was added to Wikipedia with three citations. Since then, the article has been edited just over 1,000 times. It serves as a reference for many people who are hearing or Googling the word for the first time.

A microaggression is the casual degradation of any marginalized group.

The term was coined by psychiatrist and Harvard University professor Chester M. Pierce in 1970 to describe insults and dismissals he regularly witnessed non-black Americans inflict on African Americans. Eventually, the term came to encompass the casual degradation of any socially marginalized group, such as the poor or the disabled.

— microaggression on Wikipedia

It’s important to recognize that this word and concept are not new (you can find some of the first references in Google Books / Ngram).

The revision history feature of wikis allows us to track how a word gets introduced on Wikipedia, and through work of many editors, spreads to other articles.

the microaggression article itself

I measured the times that “microaggression” is written in its own article. Variations such as “microaggressor” are included in the count. In this first graph, each change to the count is given an equal step in the x-axis, including short-lived troll edits. Other rapid edit clusters, such as a few days in June 2016, take up a significant portion of space.

Edits that changed the number of microaggression mentions in the microaggression article

Here’s the same data in a second graph, where edits minus vandalism are scaled for time:

Microaggression mentions in the microaggression article over time

We see a spike in interest in 2010, then a continual, up-and-down increase since late 2014, matched by a growing and complexifying article.

The start of the rise coincides with a potential-merge-article tag being added in October 2014 and removed in January 2015, so this was probably when Wikipedia (and the mainstream media) decided the term was here to stay. This was well before it was “word of the year” in December 2015.

77 other articles — which came first?

I found 77 other articles on the English language Wikipedia that currently include, quote, or have a reference with the word “microaggression.” Was one of these articles the first to introduce microaggressions to Wikipedia readers? I checked the revision histories to see when each article was created:

Year of creation for articles which currently mention microaggressions

Only 26 existed as separate pages before the microaggression article, with “political correctness” and “discrimination” being the oldest. The first edit to “political correctness” appears to be older, but likely both started on Nupedia in Wikipedia’s pre-history.

the older articles

I re-ran my history scraper and/or browsed revisions of the 26 older articles, to find their first occurrences. Note that many newer articles would appear in the middle of this timeline, but I wanted a detailed timeline of how “microaggressions” spread into existing articles.

Micro-inequity first mentions microaggressions in an edit in December 2005, making it the first appearance on Wikipedia! This article was moved under the category “microaggression theory” in 2014.

This article was moved under the category “microaggression theory” in 2014. Critical race theory has cited the 2000 paper “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students” since February 2009.

Discrimination has had a ‘See also’ link since April 2010.

Femininity mentioned microaggression and gender roles in August 2011, citing a 2010 book Microaggressions in everyday life: race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Derrick Bell (“one of the originators of critical race theory”) had mentions added to his biography posthumously in December 2012.

Model minority cited a paper about microaggressions in November 2013.

Students’ Society of McGill University added a reference in May 2014 after an incident.

Native American mascot controversy mentions that is an example of microaggression since August 2015.

Paula Franzese moderated a panel about microaggressions in June 2015; her article was updated in October of that year.

Word of the year was updated in December 2015 after “microaggression” was recognized by Global Language Monitor. The separate article Global Language Monitor was also edited.

Ben Shapiro’s article has referred to 2015–16 lectures critical of microaggressions since February 2016.

Summer Heights High, which aired eight episodes in 2007, got “microaggressions” added to a character bio in May 2016.

Political correctness has had a ‘See also’ link since July 2016.

Millenials (which was “Generation Y” from 2002–2013) added microaggressions to its Political Correctness section in July 2016.

Bondage pornography appeared on Wikipedia in 2002. A line and a citation about microaggressions were added in September 2016.

Stereotypes of East Asians in the United States added a paper on microaggressions in November 2016.

LGBT added information about a 2016 study of microaggressions in December 2016.

LGBT social movements added ‘microaggressions’ to the article in December 2016.

LGBT stereotypes was edited to include microaggressions in December 2016.

Anti-LGBT rhetoric cited a paper with “microaggression” in the title in December 2016.

Biphobia had “microaggressions” and “microinvalidations” added in December 2016.

Bisexual erasure first cited a paper about microaggressions in December 2016.

Anti-social behaviour had a study added in February 2017.

Androgyny added a citation with “microaggression” in the title in April 2017.

Racial fetishism discusses the problem of the word “exotic” as a microaggression since April 2017.

(updating this post…) additions to old articles in 2018:

John Jay College of Criminal Justice added Dr. Kevin Nadal and his microaggressions research to a faculty list in January 2018.

The Duquesne Duke added a link in January 2018 to an earlier story about Chik-fil-A

Lady Bird Johnson got a reference in February 2018, after TV drama LBJ minimized her role

referenced from day one

As time went on, articles started to be created with “microaggression” already mentioned in the text or references. Biographical articles on Kevin Nadal, PhD and Derald Wing Sue, PhD appear to have been the first in August 2009.

the newest articles

Eight of the articles were started in the past year, and 11 are from 2016, covering a mix of biographies of pundits, academics, documentaries, and TV shows. When an article does have a focus on social issues, it is often spun out from a main source article, which should probably be checked for early microaggression mentions as well.

I am surprised to see the “positive stereotype” revision history go back only to November 2016. Am I seeing the whole history, or was history erased by having the article move from “positive stereotypes”?

spread to other articles

I decided to graph when the articles had their first mentions (and not a count of mentions themselves, as most articles have only one mention, and the main article would overwhelm them).

The relevant article “Privilege (social inequality/sociology)”, which was started in December 2010, added microaggressions in June 2014.

The biggest step up is in December 2016, in part due to a few users editing in LGBT-related articles.

thanks to the bots

Not everyone believes in microaggressions (word or concept), and researchers’ criticism is covered well in the Wikipedia article. Some people nevertheless try to delete the microaggression article, or remove links to it from other articles. Bots such as ‘ClueBot NG’ use machine learning to automatically detect and quickly revert destructive edits.

conclusions

As best I can tell, “microaggression” first appeared on Wikipedia in the “micro-inequity” article in December 2005. The first articles to adopt the term from the start were biographies of experts on critical race theory in 2009–2012. Many citations go to authoritative sources published from 2000–2010.

Editors started paying much more attention and expanding the main article in late 2014.

The biggest spread of the term came in December 2016. No articles appear to have added or have been created with the term in May, June, or July of this year, so it is not maintaining the growth that we saw in 2016.

One warning: I haven’t searched the history of every Wikipedia article ever, so I don’t know if microaggressions mentions existed and were removed from another article, or if an older version of the microaggression article may have been deleted. Other phrases in the Wikipedia annals which researchers could work miracles on: “Obama,” “Arab Spring,” and “millennial,” though you would be working with many more pages.

Due to sensitive politics, I decided to keep the data and scraper source code private. If you are part of a program improving diversity and inclusion online, please Tweet @mapmeld, or send me an email.