CREATING A FINNISH FACTCHECKING SERVICE AND NETWORK
1. CROWD PUBLIC
SOURCING
Totuus ja Valhe is an experiment in the concept of publicsourcing (Zareff & Mäkilä 2011).
Publicsourcing is based on the idea of different web audiences: mass, crowd, public and expert.
Publicsourcing creates new publics and activates existing ones via innovation.
1 Relation to professional journalist organization ! More task-oriented, committed
Advantages of publicsourcing:
Crowd- and publicsourcing: Main differences:
In conventional crowdsourcing, the professional organization holds all the and active set of users.
power; it decides what topics are discussed and controls the usage of
crowd-collected information. In publicsourcing, the users themselves ! More usable data, more efficiency
decide the topics that are chosen and then work on the task. The role of and quality.
the professional journalist is one of a moderator or ”quality controller”.
The relationship is much more equal.
! Less need for moderation work; less costs.
2crowdsourcing, the audience cannot act autonomously; the crowd must
Autonomy ! Less need for activation of users and
maintenance of activity; less costs.
In
be separately activated for each task by the organization and it has none or
only a limited amount of self-awareness and internal communication.
In publicsourcing, the audience works as an autonomous unit which is aware RefeRence: ZaReff, Janne & Mäkilä, kiMMo 2011:
of itself and whose members communicate actively with each other. fRoM cRowdsouRcing to publicsouRcing. unpublished dRaft.
2. CREATING A FINNISH FACTCHECKING
SERVICE AND NETWORK
TOTUUS & VALHE
Totuus ja Valhe is one of the finalists in the Uutisraivaaja competition of the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation.
What is it? How does it work? What’s our gain then? And for the media?
Combines professional journa- Once a statement is posted to the Fills a gap in the field of Finnish Enhances the value and reliablity
lism to citizen journalism and site for checking, everyone can journalism: currently there are of news.
publicsourcing* in a new, innova- contribute and post their judg- no factchecking sites. Gives the news more
tive way. ment of its validity via the actual Promotes the modern commu- visibility in the social media.
Emphasizes the equality of re- site or via Facebook/SoMe ap- nication-based democracy and Creates a more committed and
lationship between professional plication. Every posting must transparency by checking the engaged audience.
organization and web users and be accompanied by a reference validity of public speech and by Gives sources and ideas for
the autonomous functioning of source – a link to a statistic, re- providing an open archive. new news.
the audience (public). search paper or similar – which
Aims to create a web-based supports it.
factchecking service, which col- Finally the journalist team
lects and checks the validity of browses through the data col- *) publicsouRcing is a theoRetical concept which takes into account the diffeRent types of web
audience based on foR exaMple pRowess, self-awaReness, autonoMy, ability and quality of woRk.
public statements, claims and lected by the users and combines
(ZaReff & Mäkilä 2011)
opinions. a final verdict – was the original
The collecting of the statements statement true or false.
and the subsequent checking are The verdict and the whole
done in collaboration between discussion thread is moved to
professional journalist team a searchable and structured ar-
running the service and web chive and the links form a refer-
users. ence library.
