Wikipedia a trusted source for Swedish media

At 2 PM today, Fredrik Reinfeldt was elected new Prime Minister of Sweden. When Aftonbladet reports about his career to date, they go to Wikipedia to find background information. This practice has become more common the last year or so. Göteborgs-Posten did it earlier this week and SVT did it a week ago. In spite of the recent critisism against the accuracy of Wikipedia, more and more journalists rely on it as a trustworthy source. And no wonder, Wikipedia did well in an accuracy test against the Encyclopedia Britannica last year.

Here is a chart that reveals the number of articles in which Wikipedia has been mentioned in Swedish online media 2004-2006. Source: Retriever.

wikipedia

Footnote: the graph above of course also includes articles about Wikipedia as such.

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