Guide to Crowdsourcing

The term “crowdsourcing” has been around for a decade. Although Wired writer Jeff Howe coined it in 2006, the ways in which news organizations define and employ it today vary enormously. This guide is organized around a specific journalism-related definition of crowdsourcing and provides a new typology designed to help practitioners and researchers understand the different ways crowdsourcing is being used both inside and outside newsrooms. This typology is explored via interviews and case studies. The research shows that crowdsourcing is credited with helping to create amazing acts of journalism. It has transformed newsgathering by introducing unprecedented opportunities for attracting sources with new voices and information, allowed news organizations to unlock stories that otherwise might not have surfaced, and created opportunities for news organizations to experiment with the possibilities of engagement just for the fun of it. Certainly, though, crowdsourcing can be high-touch and high-energy, and not all projects work the first time. To be sure, crowdsourcing businesses are flourishing outside of journalism. But within the news industry, wider systemic adoption may depend on more than enthusiasm from experienced practitioners and accolades from sources thrilled by the outreach

When in doubt ask the crowd : leveraging collective intelligence for improving event detection and machine learning

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Developing a Framework for Stigmergic Human Collaboration with Technology Tools: Cases in Emergency Response

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), particularly social media and geographic information systems (GIS), have become a transformational force in emergency response. Social media enables ad hoc collaboration, providing timely, useful information dissemination and sharing, and helping to overcome limitations of time and place. Geographic information systems increase the level of situation awareness, serving geospatial data using interactive maps, animations, and computer generated imagery derived from sophisticated global remote sensing systems. Digital workspaces bring these technologies together and contribute to meeting ad hoc and formal emergency response challenges through their affordances of situation awareness and mass collaboration. Distributed ICTs that enable ad hoc emergency response via digital workspaces have arguably made traditional top-down system deployments less relevant in certain situations, including emergency response (Merrill, 2009; Heylighen, 2007a, b). Heylighen (2014, 2007a, b) theorizes that human cognitive stigmergy explains some self-organizing characteristics of ad hoc systems. Elliott (2007) identifies cognitive stigmergy as a factor in mass collaborations supported by digital workspaces. Stigmergy, a term from biology, refers to the phenomenon of self-organizing systems with agents that coordinate via perceived changes in the environment rather than direct communication. In the present research, ad hoc emergency response is examined through the lens of human cognitive stigmergy. The basic assertion is that ICTs and stigmergy together make possible highly effective ad hoc collaborations in circumstances where more typical collaborative methods break down. The research is organized into three essays: an in-depth analysis of the development and deployment of the Ushahidi emergency response software platform, a comparison of the emergency response ICTs used for emergency response during Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and a process model developed from the case studies and relevant academic literature is described

mWASH: Mobile Phone Applications for the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Sector

This report assesses how water and sanitation practitioners have begun to tap the potential of mobile phones as tools to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services. Coined "mWASH" solutions, this report analyzes how mobile technology applications are already being tapped in many areas, such as health, agriculture, and disaster relief, as well as WASH. The ten case studies call out lessons critical for developing robust mWASH applications. Using SMS, email, or the web, citizens and residents can remotely report conditions such as poor water quality and sewage backflow, register lack of infrastructure to aid in network expansion, and view information on the status of service provision and problem resolution

Rethinking the practice of accountability journalism in the digital age. The inception and development of the first Portuguese university-based investigative journalism centre and whistleblowing platform

At a time of worrying change, when Western traditional media outlets appear to be engulfed by the collapse of the advertising-based business model and can hardly bear the strain brought about by new technologies, the present study identifies an increasing information deficit as regards quality accountability reporting. Taking up Duffield and Cokley’s challenge to change in response to the demands of the time, the present paper supports the development of VALQUIRIA, at https://valquiria.org, a transmedia, multiplatform investigative journalism project integrated in the Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences of the NOVA University of Lisbon. Valquíria, adopting a new sustainable media model, represents the very first attempt in Portugal to create a completely independent space for the education of investigative journalists, the assistance to foreign and local reporters, the production and diffusion of accountability reporting, technological products and innovative practices which can aid the profession. Featuring a vibrant crowd-sourcing and collaborative policy, its ultimate aim is to reinvigorate and enhance the practice of accountability journalism in Portugal, proving its urgency for preserving and guarding a healthy democracy. To change even more the traditional paradigm of public interest journalism, the project features a whistleblowing platform called PTLeaks: built in cooperation with the HERMES Center for Transparency and Digital Human rights, it is the first Portuguese GlobaLeaks initiative applied to investigative journalism

Framing the User Experience in Mobile Newsmaking with Smartphones

Mobile handheld devices are changing the practices of newsmaking, the roles of journalists and readers in it, and the published news in profound ways. The activity of mobile newsmaking aims at a tangible outcome, the news, which are consumed by an audience. Relatively little research exists in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) that explores what is user experience of mobile systems in goal-oriented creative activity in organizational settings and especially in the natural contexts of use. This thesis addresses this gap by focusing on user experience, which arises when smartphones are used in mobile newsmaking to create and publish online and print news in the newspaper industry. This thesis has two main goals. First, it aims to gain a holistic understanding of user experience in mobile newsmaking with smartphones from the viewpoint of mobile reporters as users. Second, it explores how mobile and location-based assignments assigned by the newsroom can support cooperative newsmaking. This thesis contains nine scientific publications based on twelve case studies. The research approach of the studies is primarily qualitative. Seven of the studies included the usage of a mobile service client for newsmaking in the mobile context of use. Two of the twelve studies concentrated on reader participation in newsmaking as a form of mobile crowdsourcing. The rest of the studies focused on professional use. Over one hundred participants participated in the studies, of which a majority were students of visual journalism with prior work experience in journalism. The empirical findings are synthesized in the thesis summary. The model of user experience in mobile newsmaking with smartphones and the process model for mobile assignment-based processes summarize the thesis work on user experience and cooperative processes. User experience in mobile newsmaking is constructed in a process of using the mobile system in a goal-oriented and creative activity in the mobile context of use. The activity of mobile newsmaking consists of several subactivities starting from encountering a newsworthy event to the publishing of the news. It may include mobile reporter’s cooperation with others, who are in the field or in the newsroom. The constructed model of user experience has seven main components: user, system, the context of use, tangible outcome, descriptive attributes, overall evaluative judgments, and consequences. The model emphasizes the characteristics of the tangible outcome of system use (news material, news) as a fourth component that can contribute to user experience in addition to the characteristics of the user, system and the context of use. User’s experienced quality of the system is described by verbally expressible descriptive attributes divided to four components. The components of the descriptive attributes are the quality of the outcome (technical and content-based quality) and the perceived impacts (benefits and costs) that complement instrumental (pragmatic) and non-instrumental (hedonic) qualities from prior models of user experience. Ease-of-use, speed, light weight, small-size, unobtrusiveness, reliability, connectivity, controllability, being always along, and multifunctionality are key attributes for positive user experience. For users, pride of the outcome, fit with needs, motivations and goals, feeling of being in control, mastery of the system and activity, and the fit of the system to user’s role and situation are important. The process model for mobile assignment-based processes illustrates the coordination and cooperation related information and communication needs of the mobile reporter and the newsroom at differenct phases of newsmaking. The constructed models and synthesized results can aid academics and practitioners when designing, studying, and evaluating solutions for mobile work that can be complex, cooperative and creative and which aims at a perceivable or tangible outcome. They can also aid in recognizing the critical success factors of the solutions for different types of users and circumstances of the context of use. Further, results can aid when selecting and planning ICT solutions for media organizations and when planning the related editorial processes, workflows, and work roles. Finally, the constructed models can be used and validated in future research in other fields of mobile work and crowdsourcing

Communication and Community: The Impact of Closed Facebook Groups on Athletic Trainers

This qualitative research study will use semi-structured interviews to explore the motivations of athletic trainers using social media for professional collaboration. The socio-psychological tradition is used to frame the study. Communities of practice, uses and gratification theory, and the Wisdom of the Crowd model are used as the guiding theoretical perspectives as they provide a framework for understanding how and why athletic trainers use social media. This qualitative study sought to show the impact of closed Facebook Group participation on athletic trainers. How athletic trainers understand patient privacy laws when participating in closed Facebook groups for athletic trainers will also be explored

Geospatial crowdsourced data fitness analysis for spatial data infrastructure based disaster management actions

The reporting of disasters has changed from official media reports to citizen reporters who are at the disaster scene. This kind of crowd based reporting, related to disasters or any other events, is often identified as 'Crowdsourced Data' (CSD). CSD are freely and widely available thanks to the current technological advancements. The quality of CSD is often problematic as it is often created by the citizens of varying skills and backgrounds. CSD is considered unstructured in general, and its quality remains poorly defined. Moreover, the CSD's location availability and the quality of any available locations may be incomplete. The traditional data quality assessment methods and parameters are also often incompatible with the unstructured nature of CSD due to its undocumented nature and missing metadata. Although other research has identified credibility and relevance as possible CSD quality assessment indicators, the available assessment methods for these indicators are still immature. In the 2011 Australian floods, the citizens and disaster management administrators used the Ushahidi Crowd-mapping platform and the Twitter social media platform to extensively communicate flood related information including hazards, evacuations, help services, road closures and property damage. This research designed a CSD quality assessment framework and tested the quality of the 2011 Australian floods' Ushahidi Crowdmap and Twitter data. In particular, it explored a number of aspects namely, location availability and location quality assessment, semantic extraction of hidden location toponyms and the analysis of the credibility and relevance of reports. This research was conducted based on a Design Science (DS) research method which is often utilised in Information Science (IS) based research. Location availability of the Ushahidi Crowdmap and the Twitter data assessed the quality of available locations by comparing three different datasets i.e. Google Maps, OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines' (QDNRM) road data. Missing locations were semantically extracted using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and gazetteer lookup techniques. The Credibility of Ushahidi Crowdmap dataset was assessed using a naive Bayesian Network (BN) model commonly utilised in spam email detection. CSD relevance was assessed by adapting Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) relevance assessment techniques which are also utilised in the IT sector. Thematic and geographic relevance were assessed using Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency Vector Space Model (TF-IDF VSM) and NLP based on semantic gazetteers. Results of the CSD location comparison showed that the combined use of non-authoritative and authoritative data improved location determination. The semantic location analysis results indicated some improvements of the location availability of the tweets and Crowdmap data; however, the quality of new locations was still uncertain. The results of the credibility analysis revealed that the spam email detection approaches are feasible for CSD credibility detection. However, it was critical to train the model in a controlled environment using structured training including modified training samples. The use of GIR techniques for CSD relevance analysis provided promising results. A separate relevance ranked list of the same CSD data was prepared through manual analysis. The results revealed that the two lists generally agreed which indicated the system's potential to analyse relevance in a similar way to humans. This research showed that the CSD fitness analysis can potentially improve the accuracy, reliability and currency of CSD and may be utilised to fill information gaps available in authoritative sources. The integrated and autonomous CSD qualification framework presented provides a guide for flood disaster first responders and could be adapted to support other forms of emergencies