Differences and Commonalities among the Internal Characteristic Evolution Patterns

As it was mentioned before, the evolutions of the internal characteristics of a topic were

reflected by the entry growths and the changes of the subjects. The examination of the entry

growths of each topic in Section 4.3.1 shows a commonality among the three topics: the entries

in all the three topics kept increasing from 2010 to 2017. It means that the Wikipedia editors’

interests in these topics grew from 2010 to 2017.

Another commonality was discovered when investigating the emerged entries: the

content of some emerged entries became more specialized. For instance, the “Attachment

theory” entry, introducing the general knowledge of the attachment theory, was created in

2004. In 2012 two associated entries of this theory were generated, which were the

“Attachment theory and psychology of religion” entry and the “Fathers as attachment figures”

entry. These two entries focused on specific aspects of the attachment theory.

Apart from the specialized entries, some other emerged entries provided summaries of

other entries, such as the “Family planning policy” entry and the “List of women’s studies

journals” entry. The “Family planning policy” entry offered a summary of the one-child policy

and the two-child policy and the “List of women’s studies journals” entry listed a collection of

journals concerning women’s studies.

The third was that the content of the emerged entries became more internationalized.

The entries created in the early years mainly focused on the family-health-related content in

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regions were generated. In the three selected topics, there were emerged entries about specific

countries and regions rather than the United States, including New Zealand, Sierra Leone, Sri

Lanka, India, Hong Kong, and so forth.

Commonalities were also found by examining the changes of the subjects in each topic.

The fourth commonality was that there were common subjects emerged in the three topics,

including abuse and violence, family planning and reproduction, health issue, inequality and

discrimination, and woman protection. Among the five common subjects, the abuse and violence subject, the family planning and reproduction subject, and the health issue subject kept growing from Periods 1 to 4. In other words, consistent growths of the subjects were

found across the three topics. It also implies that the Wikipedia editors had increasing interests

in these subjects.

In addition to the growing subjects, there were diminishing subjects and fluctuating

subjects in each topic. These findings reveal that different subjects changed in different

patterns. Since this phenomenon was observed in all the three topics, it infers that the variation

of subject changes was common for the family-health-related topics.

The last commonality was that new subjects emerged during the investigated periods

and the subjects in each topic became more and more diverse over time. For instance, a lower-

level subject, health education, occurred in Period 3, and the man protection subject emerged

in Period 4. These findings show that the Wikipedia editors’ interests extended to new areas of

family health.

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After comparing the entry growths of the three topics, it shows that although the

numbers of the associated entries in the topics all kept growing, the number of entries of Child

Maltreatment climbed much faster than the other two topics. In other words, the speed of the entry growth varied from one topic to another. Moreover, the trends of the entry growths were

also different among the three topics. The entries of Child Maltreatment increased the fastest

during 2010 to 2011, while the entries of Family Planning increased the fastest during 2011 to

2012. Different from the other two topics, the Women’s Health topic’s associated entries

emerged the most in 2013 and 2015.

Regarding the different types of the subjects in each topic, more differences were

discovered. The woman protection subject kept diminishing in the Child Maltreatment topic,

but kept growing in the Women’s Health topic. Meanwhile, this subject was a fluctuating

subject in Family Planning. These findings reveal that one subject could have totally different

developing trajectories in different topics. The different developing trends of the subjects

finally formed the different internal characteristic and external popularity evolution patterns of

the family-health-related topics.

The third difference was that each topic had their own unique subjects. For instance,

Child Maltreatment had the human trafficking subject and the man protection subject; Family Planning involved futures studies, human development, military, and environment issue;

Women’s Health contained minority group, and politics. Each of these subjects belonged to only one topic. The Wikipedia editors and viewers paid different attention to these subjects

according to the external popularities of the defined theme and their associated subjects. These

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external popularities of the topics. For instance, the diminishment of the women protection

subject could be a reason for the declines in the numbers of yearly page edits and views of Child

Maltreatment.