Crowdsourcing and Journalism

Crowdsourcing and Journalism Seth C. Lewis School of Journalism, UT-Austin [email_address]

Crowd-what?
White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.
Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.
Source: Jeff Howe

Crowdsourcing “trailer” ( online version )

Key principles
The crowd is dispersed
The crowd has a short attention span
The crowd is full of specialists
The crowd produces mostly crap
The crowd finds the best stuff
Source: “ The Rise of Crowdsourcing ,” by Jeff Howe (2006)

A spectrum of input
From the simple …
Reading documents (a la Dallas Morning News case)
Sending in photos (of polling places, for instance)
… To the more challenging …
Researching and writing articles
The point
The collective efforts of non-specialists can add up to more than one expert individual
Dan Gillmor: “my readers know more than I do”

Crowdsourcing, in journalism , 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 .
Source: Robert Niles

How it works
Lend us your eyes
Help us gather data
Submit your photos/videos
The keys …
Keep it simple
Keep it directed
Provide an easy, automated interface

Lending Us Your Eyes
Dallas Morning News and the JFK files
“ Given the volume, we haven't been able to review most of the files. That's why were calling on you. Here's your chance to review never-seen-before materials related to the JFK assassination.”
RocDocs
“ We’re inviting you to help us be watchdogs”
Work of TPM Muckraker
(Hat tip: JP Digital Digest )

Gathering ‘everyday’ info
WNYC
“ Are you being gouged ?”
Gas-guzzlers on the street
GasBuddy
Problems at polling stations in Cincy ?

And more
Full articles written by users …
Example: NowPublic
… or edited by users
Example: Wikinews
Beyond journalism
Google Image Labeler
Amazon Mechanical Turk

Like citizen journalism, but …
… crowdsourcing is easier
Users are given bite-sized tasks to accomplish
Time commitment can be small
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 .

Is crowdsourcing the future?
“The failure of one citizen journalism Web business after another this year ought to be showing news publishers that a business model based on readers doing reporters’ jobs for free isn’t working.” ( Robert Niles )
But be warned …
Open-source journalism is tough
You have get the division of labor just right

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Crowdsourcing and Journalism

by Seth Lewis on Oct 03, 2008

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