Go under the hood and learn from ABC Australia's crowd-sourced aged-care investigation, which collected more than 4000 harrowing user stories, collaborated with ProPublica and others, published cross-platform and ultimately led to a federal Royal Commission investigation of abuse, neglect and death.

1. Collaborative, Cross-Platform and
Crowd-Sourced:
ABC News Australia's
Investigation into Aged Care
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2. Welcome! We’re …
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Jo Puccini Investigations Editor ABC News (@jopuccini)
&
Scott Klein Deputy Managing Editor, ProPublica (@kleinmatic)
&
Flip Prior Content Strategy & Research ABC News (@FlipPrior)

3. And a huge shout-out to:
Our amazing ABC investigations aged care team who
can’t be here with us in New Orleans:
+ Anne Connolly
+ Fanou Filali
+ Michael Workman
+ Clare Blumer
+ And the whole Four Corners team!
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4. + How we identified the right topic
+ Building the project (staffing, tools, survey design)
+ Social media and audience engagement strategy
+ How we built our community of interest
+ Managing the data
+ Cross-platform content and stories we produced
+ Snapshot of the data
+ Key takeaways
Session outline

5. + Pick a topic with existing communities
of interest
Finding the right topic
+ Identify a community that’s been harmed
AND ignored
+ Is crowdsourcing the only option for this
story?
+ How/where will you reach them?
+ What do you need them to tell you?

6. Vulnerable people
at risk of harm
High public interest
Opacity of data
Scale of issue
Emotional impact

7. Initially, we had …
+ Investigations editor: Project lead (Jo)
+ Lead reporter: Research/reporting with subject matter expertise
+ Supervising producer: Survey design, project management and
planning
+ Audience development producer: Audience mapping, building
community of interest and social strategy
+ Digital producer: Managing audience interactions, data management
strategy, digital output design
+ News innovation: Research, project and survey design, audience
engagement strategy
Assemble a crack, collaborative team

8. + Harder & more work than expected
+ First, reporters mapped out issues
+ We sought help from survey design
experts
+ On advice, we tried to keep it short/
focused and to only make sure we
collected data in the format we needed
+ We asked if people had photos/videos
but did not require them to upload
+ We used Google Forms (big mistake)
+ We tested the form many, many times
before going live - make time for this!
Designing the survey

9. + Research, map and get to
know the audience you are trying
to engage
+ Build out a detailed social
media and audience engagement
strategy well in advance
+ Use free tools like Facebook
Audience Insights
and Crowdtangle to map your
audience and their interests
+ Have a Michael Workman on
your team!
Audience strategy

10. + Facebook Audience
Insights helped us identify
niche groups to call out to:
these are your content
amplifiers
+ Audience Insights lets you
understand the demographics
of communities on Facebook
and their interests
+ Using AI, we found and
mapped in Excel people
working in aged care
Tools: Facebook Audience Insights
This helped us find
communities of
nursing professionals

11. We also found niche communities with a demonstrated interest in nursing homes,
such as aged care nurse unions and advocacy groups as well as big communities
catering to older Australians and who published other news targeting them.
Tools: Facebook Audience Insights

12. Tools: Crowdtangle
+ Lets you search keywords
related to aged care across
social media (Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram & Reddit).
This helped us to identify:
+ Other online communities &
groups interested in aged care
+ Issues they cared about
+ Stories about aged care that
performed on social media
+ Stories about aged care
that bombed on social media

13. Community = content amplifiers
By the time it came to launch, we had a large community of interest
ready to activate who we reached out to directly:
GROUP
CLASSIFICATION /
ROLE / RELEVANCY
FAN COUNT
(IF RELEVANT)
EMAIL
CONTACT
MAIN SOCIAL PAGE
The Benevolent
Society
Charity org, advocates
for older Australian's
rights as part of their
remit.
24k
contact through
social
https://www.facebook.com/
thebenevolentsociety/
Australian
Ageing Agenda
Magazine focusing on
issues of ageing and
Australia
3k -
https://www.facebook.com/
australianageingagenda
Every Australian
Counts
Concerned with
Australians with
disabilities
27k
contact through
social
https://www.facebook.com/
everyaustraliancounts/
More Staff For
Aged Care
Union associated and
very small but super
relevant
2k
contact through
social
https://www.facebook.com/
MoreStaffForAgedCare/
The Senior
Australian newspaper
aimed at seniors
3k
edit@thesenior.c
om.au
https://www.facebook.com/
theseniornewspaper

14. + We planned a whole of network strategy across our radio, TV, digital
and social platforms.
+ Despite the size of the ABC, wrapping the whole network around a
national callout is HARD - can’t assume automatic support
+ We developed a solid internal staff engagement plan and distributed
clear briefing notes early
+ We provided other teams with assets and talking points they could
use to discuss the story on air
+ We also dangled carrots, offering access to story leads and local
case studies to other teams in return for callout support
Get internal buy-in early

15. We launched the survey on April 4, 2018 in a digital story preceding a
TV (ABC 730) & radio (AM/Digital). We also made a social vid with a
personalised callout from Anne Connolly:
After all that, finally ready to launch …

16. + Overnight, we got thousands of
submissions - from affected residents,
families and staff
+ We knew we did not have enough staff
on our team: had to scale up quickly and
add a researcher (Jo Tovey)
+ We had to develop new workflows on the
fly to manage the information
+ We had inadequate tools
+ Because of the volume of material, it
took two months to sift through, categorise
& fact check … and it was heavy, often
distressing work
Be careful what you wish for …

17. But it was worth it …
We got extensive, detailed data, including from many
dissatisfied staff whistleblowers:

18. But it was worth it …
+ Over several weeks, 4000+ people completed a survey and hundreds
more emailed our aged care inbox with their stories, including many
families willing to provide documentary evidence.
+ We got enough
compelling material to
produce a two-part TV
documentary on Four
Corners and a whole
suite of digital stories.
+ Anne joined Four
Corners for eight weeks,
while we prepared for
the digital rollout.

19. We thanked everyone who contacted us
+ We committed
to responding to every single
person who contacted us
+ This was very hard because
Google Forms had no inbuilt
email function and we had a
separate inbox to manage
+ Our difficulties managing
data demonstrated we needed
better tools
+ Like ProPublica, we opted for
Screendoor

20. September 13: Who Cares? previews

21. September 16: Government reacts

22. September 17:
Who Cares? Part 1

23. September 17: Who Cares? airs on TV
(This simultaneously live-streamed on Facebook - our livestreams of
reached almost a million viewers on there)

24. We also activated our database
(We asked people to send photos of horrible food in nursing homes)

25. Which gave us another
huge story on digital
and social

26. September 24: Who
Cares? Part 2
Again, the TV investigation was
launched alongside a suite of digital
and social content

27. We offered some
solutions journalism

28. Audience collaboration kept delivering
+ We asked our database
to share stories of sexual
abuse
+ This became an
investigative piece
broadcast on digital radio
and online

29. + In another callout to
the database we
sourced evidence of
use of physical and
chemical restraints
+ This became a story
on TV and digital
which led to an
immediate change in
national regulations.
Audience collaboration kept delivering

30. We keep our community up to date
+ Using Mailchimp, we
have done more than 10
personalised pop-up
newsletters
+ We have built a loyal
following of more
than 4,000 subscribers
who we keep up to date
with any new
developments

31. + 60+ stories on aged care published by ABC News since the launch
across platforms - digital/social, radio and TV
+ Readers have spent 7.1 million minutes on the investigations
team’s pieces, which alone have generated more than 3.5 million
page views
+ Digital live streams of TV on Facebook reached almost 1 million
people and 500K views
+ 2 x other short forms on Facebook reached 1 million people and
500K+ views
+ Food story video reached 500K+ people and 250K+ views
+ YouTube videos have racked up over 500k views
+ Huge pickup by other media with direct attribution to the ABC
Results of our work: A snapshot

32. Anne Connolly was recently named
NSW Journalist of the Year

33. + ABC News is frequently
mentioned in the Royal
Commission hearings still
happening around Australia
+ ABC sources have appeared as
prominent witnesses
+ We keep getting sent new leads
and angles to investigate
+ We anticipate crucial policy and
regulatory changes to aged care
as a result of the Royal
Commission, which is due to report
in April 2020.
The story keeps on rolling

34. Maybe … $250,000 over 18months+?
+ We estimate 11 people staff have been
involved at various times (one FT, the rest
temporary, PT or consultative)
+ We have scaled up and scaled down staff as
needed - flexibility has been key
+ Other ABC staff have been involved in TV/
Radio production
+ Staff collaboration across teams has been
critical to the success of the project
+ No paid marketing – organic audience
engagement only
So … how much did this all cost??

35. YES! It was hard, but worth it. Working
closely with audiences helped us to:
+ Surface compelling new case studies
+ Understand scale of issues
+ Amplify stories and increase reach
+ Connect with people deeply affected
by an issue at scale
+ Build trust with audiences: hundreds
of people have written to thank us for
our work
+ Build critical new skills
+ Have a significant impact
Would we do it again??
“Despite the work, I think
everyone on the project has
found it a profoundly
moving experience. The
information our audience
gave us was incredible and
the amount of time and care
they put into their
responses blew us
away.You don't often get
this close to your audience
in an investigation, so it was
a real privilege.”
— Jo Puccini

36. Key takeaways
DO! DON’T…
+ Figure out first what stories you want
to get from a crowdsource and work
backwards to create your methodology
+ Seek expert guidance and support
(thanks ProPublica!)
+ Make lots of time for testing
+ Build in questions that self-
categorise data e.g. staff/family or
satisfied/dissatisfied
+ Keep in close contact with your
community of interest
+ Keep secondary crowdsourcing
based on that small, engaged group
+ Be afraid to investigate “in the open”
+ Underestimate the time it will take or
the staff you might need
+ Let up on demand for access to
adequate tools
+ Make your survey too long or
complicated
+ Forget to build in pre-approval for
using the audience’s answers from the
outset like we did (we had to go back
to each person in the initial
crowdsource to get approval to use the
information, story or images).

37. Thanks for listening…
Any
questions?
If you are interested in
collaborating/talking, email
joanne.puccini@abc.net.au &
flip.prior@abc.net.au