New media and democratic society 1117 presentation
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. 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)
9. 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
t.”
11. 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.
12. 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 earthquake (Youtube video)
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. 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)
17. 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!
18. 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”)
20. 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.
21. 21
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.
22. 22
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
23. 23
Examples of Crowdsourcing
outside journalism
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
24. 24
Examples of Crowdsourcing
outside journalism
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
25. 25
Examples of Crowdsourcing
in journalism
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
26. 26
Examples of Crowdsourcing
in journalism
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
27. 27
Examples of Crowdsourcing
in journalism
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
28. 28
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
29. 29
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
31. 31
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
