New Media and Democratic New Media and Democratic SocietySociety

11/17 presentation11/17 presentation

Fannin Chen, Tina Chen

Crowdsourcing

Mashups

Citizen journalism

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 Indiamicrobiology in U pennsylvaniamaster 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

Introduction of the Author

Anand Girid haradas Born in Cleve land, Ohio, to parents

from Bom bay, he has also resided in Paris and out side Washington, D.C., where his family still lives.

He studied the history of political thought at the Uni ver sity of Michi gan, 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” col umn for The New York Times and its global edi tion

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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.

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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

What is mashup? Mash up is a web application hybrid!

Merrill, 2006Mapping mashups (google map, yahoo map API)Video and photo mashups (flickr sudoku)Search and shopping mashups (amazon

wishlist)News mashups (RSS, ATOM)

Mapping mashups NYC Craigslist Apartments, Yahoo! Pipes,

+Yahoo! Maps,+Microsoft Outlook Mashup

Video and photo mashups Play sudoku using numbers from Flickr! 

Search and shopping mashups Amazon wish list  Integrate all thing you want to buy in one page.

News mashups Integrate news article from lots of news

websites

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 needed the most.”

-The power of crowdsourcing! Safe lifes, provide aids.

Haiti crisis map

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.

OpenStreetMap in the Haiti relief http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Anyone can mapWikipedia for mapsover 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 mappingHaïti map coverage in Openstreetmap following 2010 earthquake

(Youtube video)

OpenStreetMap in the Haiti relief It looks like this now!

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 responeseHaiti Earthquake – Imagery Downloads

http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/imagery.html

Intended for use by mapping professionals with GIS software.

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

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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

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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

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)

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 journalismhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tmW8PttqlU

Set up a topic, find news worthy articles, integrate with CNN!

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”)

wikinews http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page Works just like Wikipedia You can create new page and start writing, or

editing news that has been done before.

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?

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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

THANK YOU!THANK YOU!