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There are four main traditions in sociology: the post-modern tradition, the conflict tradition, the structural-functionalist tradition, and the symbolic-interactionist tradition. In a simplistic overview, post-modernists look at the world by comparing and contrasting different realities, often removing any centre. Conflict theorists look at how macro society organises its power relations via conflict. Structural-functionalists look at how macro society organises itself into a structure that creates functional interactions; it is about learning how society members work together, not against each other. Finally, symbolic-interactionists look at micro sociology; they analyse how individuals are socialised by society and how these individuals affect society.
This paper analyses the media of Wikipedia – an online free-content encyclopaedia that anyone can edit – via two sociological theorists. The Wikipedia encyclopaedia works by allowing the general public to edit and add to the encyclopaedia. Each individual can have an effect on Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is itself beyond anything an individual has contributed to it. It can be seen, therefore, that Wikipedia has distinct micro attributes common to symbolic interactionist theory. Furthermore, Wikipedia is created via the constant comparison and contrasting of the editors. Thus, Wikipedia can be seen to have attributes common to post-modern theory. Therefore, this paper will analyse Wikipedia from both symbolic-interactionist and post-modern perspectives via Peter L. Berger and Richard Rorty, respectively.