A Million Penguins
On February 1st, 2007, Penguin Books working in partnership with
De Montfort University launched "A Million Penguins" - a wiki in which the public would be invited to write a novel collaboratively.The wiki was scheduled to be open for submissions throughout February 2007.
The results were staggering; within 3 weeks the wiki had received around 250,000 page views and 9,000 edits.
Following the completion of the creative project itself, Dr Bruce Mason (Research Fellow at the IOCT) undertook an analytical study of 'A Million Penguins'. The object of this research project was to perform an analysis of the cultural text that is "A Million Penguins" in order to derive some guidelines for future attempts at mass, collaborative authoring. The main focus of the research was on the people who contributed, focusing in particular on how they got involved, why they got involved, what they did and how, looking back, they felt about it.
download the full research report (PDF, 800kb)
For further information please contact:Professor Sue Thomas
Email: s.thomas [at] dmu.ac.uk