All That We Touch: Wikipedia

Impact Studios works with researchers across UTS and beyond to generate research impact through audio storytelling. Its new series All That We Touch is a podcast about the complicated relationships between humans and technology, nature and politics.

“With this new podcast, we are looking to partner with researchers across UTS to help share knowledge and achieve research impact across science, technology, engineering, design and the broader arts disciplines,” explained Executive Producer Sarah Gilbert.

"Our inaugural series is a collaboration with Faculty of Design and Society researchers Prof Heather Ford and Dr Francesca Sidoti, who have teamed up with writer and journalist Richard Cooke to deliver a multi-episode series about Wikipedia - what it knows and what it doesn’t.”

​Sarah said that the team takes a fascinating look at the inner workings of a resource most of us use every day, even if we don't realise it. 

"It's so important for people to understand this incredible resource that humans have made together: what it does well and what it could do better as well as the forces and disputes that have shaped it.”

Promotional flyer for the UTS All That We Touch podcast

About the program

In All That We Touch: Wikipedia, the producers go behind the edit button of the world's encyclopaedia.

Erinsborough has a school, a hospital, a police station and a pub that has been destroyed twice: once by a gas leak, once by arson. It also doesn't exist. It's the fictional Melbourne suburb of the soap opera Neighbours - and on Wikipedia, it has more recorded history than many real Australian towns.

We're often told not to trust Wikipedia, but that advice misses the point. The real skill is knowing how it works: who writes it, how decisions get made, and where the gaps are.

That gap is the starting point for a new six-part podcast series hosted by Wikipedia researcher Professor Heather Ford, an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS, author, reporter and screenwriter Richard Cooke and Dr Francesca Sidoti, a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the ARC Discovery project 'Wikipedia and the nation's story: towards equity in knowledge production' in the UTS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Impact Studios’ Jane Curtis and Francesca Sidoti as Associate Producer.

The first three episodes ask: what shapes Wikipedia? How Australia and its places show up on the platform? Three big fights over its history; and how will Wikipedia survive generative AI?  

The second half is about using the encyclopedia better, as a teacher, a student, a librarian, or a Wikipedia editor. 

Heather said the series arrives at a critical moment for internet users.

"Wikipedia matters now more than ever. Even if you think you're not using it, you probably are - through the search engines and chatbots trained on its content. What people, places and events mean and their importance to the nation gets established on Wikipedia and travels all over the internet,” she explained, adding that knowing how Wikipedia is made is vital to understanding what we know about ourselves and one another.

Francesca Sidoti

Francesca said the series also offers insights listeners can use to get the most from their everyday Wikipedia use.

"We're often told not to trust Wikipedia, but that advice misses the point. The real skill is knowing how it works: who writes it, how decisions get made, and where the gaps are.”

And that’s a skill listeners can sharpen over the whole series, but especially its second half, which includes an episode on how to teach and study using Wikipedia. 

What’s next?

Other Impact Studios podcasts include

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