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.

Citizen Journalism and Democracy

When Dr Andy Williams of Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies delivered a lecture on the role of Citizen Journalism in democracy, it got me thinking -

Do citizen journalists make democracy better?

The fundamental definition of democracy is where the supreme power has landed the job in a free electoral system by the people. So at the basest level, the media's role in a functioning democracy is to report and cover the people and parties seeking office.

But one of the old limitations of the mainstream media, is that to find out most of the information we need to about politicians, we are slave to the judgement and choices the hacks on Fleet Street make.

This can therefore profoundly shape the fortunes of democracy, and the successes of individual politicians. How can we vote for someone if we do not know anything about them? Excusing of course information the politicians themselves advertise to us out of their own pockets. But most routes to finding out about our govermentnts have traditionally been through the media.

Until now.

The rise of Citizen Journalism is a recent thing, particularly within the last few years. Most of it is to be found springing up all over the World Wide Web. The average joe is reporting on the issues of the day, and his copy, video, audio and pictures are being seen by millions.

And Citizen Journalism's role in democracy is being seen right here right now, all around us. Next month one of the most important elections around the world will be decided. Will it be Obama or McCain? So simple to sum up, but isn't this bipartisan choice so, well, simple? Is there not more on offer?

Just ten months ago, there actually was, as the primaries gave the chance for voters to elect someone from over 20 different personalities in the main two US parties alone. Sadly, 20 is a lot of people to cram into broadcast timeslots or newspaper margins, so enter the citizen journalists! They had their say in trying to sway the path of democracy away from inevitability.

Nobody represents this shift better than Dr. Ron Paul. A 73 year old Republican congressman from Texas, this man captured the hearts and minds of well over a million Americans, and secured enough votes and delegates in the primaries to take fourth place in the Republican Race. An anti war libertarian, his pro-civil liberties, anti-big government views made him stand out from the rest in his party, who seemed steadfast in their support for many of George Bush's policies.

But I will both be disappointed, and yet not too surprised if most of the British people reading this have not heard of him. Low figures in the official political polls simply meant the mainstream media did not cover him enough over in the US, let alone in the UK.

The blogosphere and networking media went nuts for him. News portal websites like http://www.ronpaulforpresident2008.com/ and http://www.dailypaul.com/ would post multimedia reports covering his every move from professional journalists to an ordinary member of the public. This article showed how for a significant part of last year "Paul" was a number 1 web searched term as ranked by Technorati.

This article shows his placing as the top number of You Tube subscribers for most of his campaign - pipping Obama, who begrudgingly settled for second place. Such was the enthusiasm and buzz generated by his online rise, he managed to break fundraising records, by receiving the largest amount of campaign donations ever received in one day in US political history on December 16th, at over $6 million, all of it received online. In the final quarter of 2007, he raised over $9 million more than the second highest Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani.

I could discuss the many myriad reasons why the citizen journalist driven revolution for this man did not in the end get him elected. Perhaps their voices are not yet as powerful, and Ron Paul would have needed full, regular, supportive coverage by all mainstream media outlets to secure the nomination. Primary and Caucus voters were clearly not all active Internet users. Yet the Journalistic fire in ordinary voices tried their hardest in making a different, perhaps better choice than Obama or McCain.

Citizen Journalism is clearly causing a stir in the outcomes of democracy, but it has not yet seen clear revolutionary results to suppass the efforts of the mainstream. In fact the relationship between the mainstream and the alternative media is crucial to its success. When the two are combined, does it help or hinder democracy?

Take a look at this video, where Fox News utilised User Generated Content (UGC) in the form of a post debate text poll, which frequently crowned Ron Paul the winner of the Republican debates.

The issue of quality standards is ongoing - can we trust what the public thinks as truthful and accurate?

Sean Hannity as the major pundit is clearly displeased and disbelieving of these polls, claiming the Congressman's supporters must have texted in repeatedly.

As the regular political commentator, who are we to believe? The earnest texters, or the adamant proclaimers of the phrase "he has no chance of winning"?

When there is a discord between what the public say and think and what journalists tell us to think, you begin to realise Journalism's role in making democracy better may yet have a long way to go.