Cultural Differences in the Understanding of History on Wikipedia

This paper sheds light on cultural differences in the understanding of historical military events between Chinese, English, French, German, and Swedish Wikipedia language editions. Differences in understanding historical events can lead to intercultural misinterpretation and conflicts that cause negative consequences for international relations. We identified the most important historical events, mined cross-cultural relations, investigated word usage in war-related pages and performed network, complexity, and sentiment analysis. We also analyzed the usage of war-related words and the quantity of war-related events mentioned in different languages. Our findings suggest that World War I and World War II are the most important historical events within English, French, and German cultures and English Wikipedia contains more violence and war-related content, with a higher level of complexity than other language editions.