Original Research The Wiki Defense: Contesting the Status of Knowledge in the Floyd Landis Doping Case

This theoretical essay applies active audience theory, convergence theory, and contemporary understandings of Web logs to an analysis of knowledge production in the antidoping movement. Using the Floyd Landis doping case as an example it examines how cycling fans and other interested parties used Internet sites such as wikis and blogs to mount a challenge to the hegemony of institu­tional knowledge produced by organizations such as the World Anti Doping Agency and Union Cycliste Internationale. The essay concludes that Landis's so-called wiki defense—based as it was on popular challenges to received knowledge—was a successful contestation of normative procedures and institu­tional authority in the prosecution of doping allegations in international sport.