The document discusses new media and democratic society, focusing on crowdsourcing, mashups, and citizen journalism. It provides examples of each: crowdsourcing examples include Ushahidi and OpenStreetMap's mapping of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Mashups combine data from different sources, like mapping apartment listings on Craigslist to a map. Citizen journalism allows non-professionals to contribute news reports, like through CNN's iReport or local newspapers that involve citizens. The document examines the trustworthiness of crowdsourced information and how crowdsourcing could impact democracy by giving more voices a platform.

1. New Media and Democratic Society
11/17 presentation
Fannin Chen, Tina Chen
Crowdsourcing
Mashups
Citizen journalism
10年11月20日星期六

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
10年11月20日星期六

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
10年11月20日星期六

4. 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.
4
10年11月20日星期六

5. 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
5
10年11月20日星期六

6. 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)
10年11月20日星期六

7. Mapping mashups
 NYC Craigslist Apartments, Yahoo! Pipes,
+Yahoo! Maps,+Microsoft Outlook Mashup
10年11月20日星期六

8. Video and photo mashups
 Play sudoku using numbers from Flickr!
10年11月20日星期六

9. Search and shopping mashups
 Amazon wish list
 Integrate all thing you want to buy in one page.
10年11月20日星期六

10. News mashups
 Integrate news article from lots of news websites
10年11月20日星期六

11. 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.”
10年11月20日星期六

12. Haiti crisis map
10年11月20日星期六

13. 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
10年11月20日星期六

14. 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)
10年11月20日星期六

15. OpenStreetMap in the Haiti relief
 It looks like this now!
10年11月20日星期六

16. 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
10年11月20日星期六

17. 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.
10年11月20日星期六

18. 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
18
10年11月20日星期六

19. 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 thatʼs 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
19
10年11月20日星期六

20. 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
20
10年11月20日星期六

21. 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
21
10年11月20日星期六

22. 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
22
10年11月20日星期六

23. 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)
10年11月20日星期六

24. 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!
10年11月20日星期六

25. 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”)
10年11月20日星期六

26. 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.
10年11月20日星期六

27. 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.
10年11月20日星期六

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
28
10年11月20日星期六

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?
29
10年11月20日星期六

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
30
10年11月20日星期六

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
31
10年11月20日星期六

32. Thank you!
32
10年11月20日星期六