1. New Media and Democratic SocietyNew Media and Democratic Society
11/17 presentation11/17 presentation
Fannin Chen, Tina Chen
Crowdsourcing
Mashups
Citizen journalism
2. Introduction of the Author
Karthika Muthukumaraswamy
She was from India and moved to US since
2001.
3 graduate degrees in
Integrated Master of Science in LifeSciences in
India
microbiology in U pennsylvania
master of journalism in Temple U
a research specialist in the Department of
Cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania
multi aspects background, she’s now a
freelance writer focus on politics, media,
science, research and professional tennis
3. Introduction of the Author
Anand Girid haradas
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to parents from
Bombay, he has also resided in Paris and
outside Washington, D.C., where his
family still lives.
He studied the history of political thought
at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, and at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford.
the author of “India Calling: An Intimate
Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking,”
He writes the “Currents” column
for The New York Times and its global
edition
4. 4
Jeff Howe
He invented the term “crowdsourcing” in one of the articles he
wrote for Wired magazine in 2006.
He is an editor at Wired magazine where he covers the media
and entertainment industry.
He is also a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. (The Nieman
Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The
Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.)
He mentioned in his article that crowdsourcing is actually the
application of open source principles to fields outside of software.
5. 5
Crowdsourcing
What is Crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a
designated employee and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally
large group of people in a form of open call.
Howe differentiated four types of crowdsourcing strategies:
Crowdfunding, Crowdcreation, Crowdvoting, Crowd wisdom.
Example of Crowdfunding: spot.us
6. What is mashup?
Mash up is a web application hybrid!
Merrill, 2006
Mapping mashups (google map, yahoo map API)
Video and photo mashups (flickr sudoku)
Search and shopping mashups (amazon wishlist)
News mashups (RSS, ATOM)
11. Mashups + croudsourcing
Ushahiti
What is Ushahidi (Youtube video)
-Swahili (Bentu language) means "testimony" or "witness“
-Created for Kenya's post election violence since 2007.
-People reported violence through text , email, twitter
and place it on google map
“Get critical and timely information to the people who
-The power of crowdsourcing! Safe lifes, provide aids.
13. What does Ushahiti do now
Concerning public, reporting crisis.
Sudan Vote Monitor is a Sudanese civil society initiative
that used SMS to monitor the elections in the Sudan.
Chile Crisis Map is tracking the post-earthquake crisis
response and recovery efforts in Chile.
Interesting!
Snowmageddon: The Cleanup - Where the
Washington region comes together to dig out of
Snowmageddon 2010.
14. OpenStreetMap in the Haiti relief
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Anyone can map
Wikipedia for maps
over 160,000 users
The earthquake devastate Haiti.
Update the road network and map to let the aid come in
time.
Have a complet look in 48hrs
Amazing reconstruction if mapping
Haïti map coverage in Openstreetmap following 2010 ea
(Youtube video)
16. OpenStreetMap in the Haiti relief
What does the user say…
Kjeld Jensen, Red Cross (IFRC): … A few days ago I
installed a version on my Garmin Oregon GPS and the
result is impressive. It has already saved me and my
driver from getting lost twice, and the alternative
would have been long delays. In the coming days I will try
to update our Red Cross relief GPS receivers with your
map.
Google crisis responese
Haiti Earthquake – Imagery Downloads
http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/imagery.html
Intended for use by mapping professionals with GIS
software.
17. Mission 4636
http://www.mission4636.org/
“It allowed people on the ground to text their requests
for medical care, food, water, security and shelter from
any Digicel / Comcel-Voila device and receive aid.”
Where people do not
have internet access or
smart phone, they can
still report crisis through
SMS text.
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Examples of Crowdsourcing
outside journalism
DARPA’s red ballon challenge
In less than 9 hours, a group from MIT spotted all the 10 red
balloons and won a prize of 40,000 dollars
Profit sharing helps crack the challenge
The reliability issues was also mentioned
Amazon Mechanical Turk
A platform for business owners to submit HITs (Human
Intelligence Tasks)
The HITs are designed to require very little time, and offer
very little compensation
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Examples of Crowdsourcing
outside journalism
Google image labeler
An application designed as a game in order to help Google
improve image search results
Very addictive game as shown by the points users earned
Quirky.com
An example of crowdsourcing in product developments
The website asks its users to submit ideas of an product or
vote for ideas that’s been submited
Compared with traditional business models, the advantage
is you only pay what you use, and an unlimited amount of
people are helping you
20. 20
Examples of Crowdsourcing
in journalism
Gallop survey shows that faith in traditional media has
reached a new low, people’s demand for online news is
increasing.
Help me investigate
A website designed for using crowdsourcing in investigative
journalism
The key idea behind the site is that it breaks down investigations
into different elements
People with specialist knowledges are helping journalists with their
investigation
21. 21
Examples of Crowdsourcing
in journalism
New York Times Lens
A project asks normal people to freeze their
moments at 3 pm, May 2nd
Received over 10,000 photos submitted from all
around the world
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Examples of Crowdsourcing
in journalism
YouTube’s “Life in a day” Project
YouTubers are asked to record their day on July 24th, 2010
The bits and pieces submitted from around the world will then
be collected and built into a feature-length documentary film
Implications
Crowdsourcing in such projects are an important method of
storing history
This method is especially important for countries where part of
the history is a taboo topic
Crowdsourcing might be a good idea for oral history projects
23. Citizen Journalism
Jay Rosen
He is a press critic, a writer, and a professor of
journalism at New York University.
Strong supporter of citizen journalism
Definition of Citizen Journalism
(Youtube video)
24. Citizen Journalism- examples
CNN ireport (citizen journalism + crowdsourcing)
http://ireport.cnn.com/
Assignments
there are assignments set for ireporter
Voice
ireporter on CNN live!
Hear what Lila King, a senior producer of CNN.com said
about citizen journalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tmW8PttqlU
Set up a topic, find news worthy articles, integrate
with CNN!
25. Twin Cities Daily Plan
http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/
Goal:
“We strive for high standards of fairness, accuracy, and
accountability.”
“bring together professionals and citizens to create
diverse content in local journalism.”
They do train citizen journalism skills
It’s professionally edited and staffed by a few part-time
professional editors and journalists (who do “quality
control”)
27. Compare to the “five cases”
Crowdsourcing, involves many people’s work.
Citizen journalism encompasses crowdsourcing (Bowman
& Willis, 2003; Lasica, 2003), but often refers to a more
generalized notion of non-professional journalists
contributing to the news gathering and/or reporting
process of a professional journalism. (Thiel-Stern, 2009)
One can accomplish a news article, but combining with the
wisdom of the crowd- lots of articles, or say, crisis reports, it
can form a tremendous power force.
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Trustworthiness
The 5 most Entertaining Crowdsourcing Disasters
Lesson learned: Crowdsourcing is not a good idea when the crowd is not well
managed. Targeting the right crowd is key here
The trustworthiness of the information collected:
TripAdvisor case
Hotel owners were were upset about the fraudulent reviews on
TripAdvisor
The website responded that they value reviewers privacy and they
would not provided names
The reviews were finally removed due to media pressure
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Trustworthiness
Are review sites trustworthy? Yelp.com case
Yelp salespeople have offered to remove bad reviews
they've also removed good reviews when businesses turn down
advertising solicitations
Who to trust?
30. 30
Trustworthiness
Other controversial opinions:
There is no crowd in crowdsourcing and the vast majority
of Wiki entries are the product of a motivated individual.
Crowdsourcing is not suitable to solve complex problems
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Crowdsourcing and Democracy
It allows minority voices to be heard
Example: President Obama’s "Open For Questions" forums were
hijacked by marijuana legalization enthusiasts
The possibility of using crowdsourcing in policy making:
The HMG case
It’s an experiment by the British government
Achievements in influencing policy making
Using crowdsourcing inside a crowdsourcing project
There may be some issues, but still, the potential is unlimited
