The Web of Knowledge: Encyclopedias and Authority in the Digital Age

What we know as an "encyclopedia" has dramatically expanded in scope, scale, and popularity in the digital age and with Wikipedia. These objects are both gateways to information and demand our renewed attention to the controversies over authority, expertise, and cultural perspectives. In this talk, Giota Alevizou will dive into the genre of encyclopedias.

Giota Alevizou’s innovative book The Web of Knowledge: Encyclopedias and Authority in the Digital Age (2026) traces the historical roots of digital encyclopedias in the early development of information science and cyberculture. It identifies trends within their digital evolution to reveal a complex web of relationships between media technology, knowledge, and culture.

In her talk, Alevizou will discuss several case studies to analyse how major technological shifts have impacted the publishing models, governance, and creative labour of reference works; the evolution of the genre and the modalities of representation and access; and the range of uses and symbolic meanings of encyclopedias as diverse nodes within broader information economies, as commodities and as public goods.

Speakers