Tuesday 25 November 2008

All together now - collaboration and crowdsourcing
















Source: http://blogs.sun.com/cphcampus/entry/crowdsourcing_or_open_sourcing RichardAM


At the Networked Journalism Summit in New York Oct 2007, American Journalist Jeff Jarvis said:


“Journalism can and must expand even as the institutions that do journalism shrink. The future is ‘pro-am journalism’, doing things together.”



Pro-am Journalism is exactly what it says on the tin – a combination of both professional and amateur contributors.

Networked journalism is where the audience contributes to the gathering of information. The public writes, photographs and researches as integral parts of the newsgathering and publishing processes. The professional journalists step back to become filters, connectors, facilitators and editors.


But networked journalism is not just about blogging. It is also about “crowdsourcing”. This is doing things conventional journalists cannot do on their own, for sheer lack of manpower.
Robert Niles explains here :


“It is the use of a large group of readers to report a news story. It differs from traditional reporting in that the information collected is gathered not manually, by a reporter or team of reporters, but through some automated agent, such as a website.”

“Unlike more traditional notions of "citizen journalism," crowdsourcing does not ask readers to become anything more than what they've always been: eyewitnesses to their daily lives. They need not learn advanced reporting skills, journalism ethics or how to be a better writer. It doesn't ask readers to commit hours of their lives in work for a publisher with little or no financial compensation. Nor does it allow any one reader's work to stand its own, without the context of many additional points of view. “



Here is a description of crowdsourcing in the discipline of business – showing how the term is similar to the outsourcing of tasks usually done by employees to a larger external group of people.


Examples scale time and space



Kate Marymount, of the Fort Myers News-Press in Florida, said that after Hurricane Katrina, they went to the courts to attempt to force the federal relief agency to disclose details of which citizens had received government help. They put the data online and encouraged readers to look through it. Within 24 hours, there were 60,000 searches from readers, who then contacted News-Press journalists telling them about neighbours with wrecked homes who had not received aid. All kinds of leads were being made, with the readers doing the investigating but the paper reporting the stories. A union between the dynamic manpower of the public and publication power of the News-Press helped to make aware of dangerous and tragic situations, save lives, and challenge the central government.


Networked journalism exists in unexpected parts of the world. The Guardian website, The BAe Files features an investigation into bribes and arms sales to Saudi Arabia. All the data is now available online, which has encouraged a network of amateur and professional investigative journalists around the world to aid in the digging.

And it is not just mainstream media that utilises this business model of crowdsourcing, the evolution of outsourcing.



In newassignment.net/ , launched in March 2007, users log on and get to find potential reporting assignments they can contribute to. They can suggest questions for the reporter to ask, conduct interviews and sometimes actually write the full story.

Other journalists had rather more down-to-earth ideas for networking their journalism. One writer for Wired magazine got readers to test out sex toys.

It is not just everyday news, but everyday valuable information, both scientific and economic that has embraced crowdsourcing.

GasBuddy.com allows readers in more than 100 communities to share real-time reports on local gas prices in America.


This earthquake mapping website from the United States Geological Survey builds detailed "shake maps"showing the intensity of earthquakes by zip code, through thousands of volunteer reports submitted online by readers.


Source: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/ Latest Earthquakes in the USA - Last 7 days
USA earthquakes with M1+ located by USGS and Contributing Agencies.



But there are some problems

But the big question is: Does it pay? Alive in Baghdad is a video blog which aims to present “real life” in today’s Iraq but it needs to look for payment to keep going. Its creatorBrian Conley said: “We have managed to sell some of our footage to major networks like Sky but we are also trying other methods to raise money, such as asking our viewers for voluntary subscriptions. We are raising money, but not enough to keep this going, let alone expand it.”


How do you know it is accurate and credible? This is one problem with all citizen journalism, and a motive for the professional journalists to apply checks and balances. One such check is requesting the reader to submit personal identification along with the report. On The Earthquake Website readers must supply a zip code, name, phone, e-mail and street address

The pros and cons of crowdsourcing are many.
Pros include:
- Community Involvement, the reporting of events commonly missed by the MSM, but of importance to nische interests and markets.
- A valuable and permanent database of content is built up if online.
Cons include:
- The risks of amateur reporting, the majority of interest, i.e. the fact stories people want to report on are prioritized over stories that may be the most important for public interest.
- User bias and prejudices or political agendas.
- Staff reporters may lose value and utility.


But finally I should say that now YOU can get involved: Try free online survey tools and mapping websites which can help you to collect and publish reader contributed data to your desired needs.

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