Cultural Configuration of Wikipedia: measuring Autoreferentiality in Different Languages

Among the motivations to write in Wikipedia given by the current literature there is often coincidence, but none of the studies presents the hypothesis of contributing for the visibility of the own national or language related content. Similar to topical coverage studies, we outline a method which allows collecting the articles of this content, to later analyse them in several dimensions. To prove its universality, the tests are repeated for up to twenty language editions of Wikipedia. Finally, through the best indicators from each dimension we obtain an index which represents the degree of autoreferentiality of the encyclopedia. Last, we point out the impact of this fact and the risk of not considering its existence in the design of applications based on user generated content.