Why do some facts about the world become well known and ubiquitous, whereas others are relegated to the status of opinion, or become so mired in controversy that they cannot survive the onslaught that they receive from those opposed to them? Why do bad facts travel far and wide, while good ones are stopped short in their tracks? Who has the greatest power over our factual information when facts are born digital?

Dr Heather Ford from the University of Leeds answers these questions and more by looking at Wikipedia as an infrastructure upon which facts travel.

The talk was delivered to an audience of academics in the conference rooms at the University of Melbourne's Networked Society Institute. You can find the presentation slides and more at networkedsociety.unimelb.edu.au