A new, scalable measure of party ideology uses the descriptive tags found in political parties' Wikipedia infoboxes. By treating those tags as signals under a simple tag-assignment model, the approach places both parties and ideology labels in a shared spatial scale.
Undergraduate Wikipedia assignments can serve two linked goals, the authors argue: improving public information on politics in the Global South and providing strong pedagogical benefits. Drawing on their experience teaching African politics, they contend that students are motivated and well positioned to close content gaps on Wikipedia because they can access gated scholarship, receive expert supervision, and translate academic sources for general audiences. The assignment also develops digital literacy, research and citation skills, technical-editing experience on a web platform, neutral writing competence, and confidence producing public-facing work, and it works in both in-person and online teaching contexts.