Introduction to crowdsourcing for journalists and journalism educators. Use of four cases and what we can learn from them. Three cases include maps; the fourth case does not.

1. Crowdsourcing
(and maps)
Mindy McAdams
Professor, Journalism
University of Florida
Gainesville, Florida USA

2. Example: New York City snow storm December 26, 2010

3. WNYC Radio:
Google Map
December 29, 2010 (3 days after storm):
White = snow not cleared

4. Michael R. Bloomberg, mayor, New York City, December 2010

5. WNYC Radio:
Google Map
December 30, 2010 (4 days after storm):
Purple = snow cleared

6. WNYC Radio: Snow Crisis
• Over the radio, listeners were asked to text PLOW to
30644, the station’s mobile shortcode
• The location of each text was added to a Google Map
• The map was posted on the radio station’s website
• Each person who texted was asked to also leave an audio
report as voicemail
• The audio reports were played on the radio

7. “It really encourages
other people to send in
their story and contribute,
when they hear people
just like them.”
—Jim Colgan, former WNYC news producer

8. Lessons Learned
1. The audience can help journalists
2. Journalists need to think creatively so they
can use this resource well (resource: the
audience)
3. Social media can be very useful in crisis
reporting
New York City snow storm

9. Minnesota Public Radio
uses this map to show
where members of the
audience have reported
holes in the street
(“potholes”).

10. Instructions: Drag the map and zoom into your
pothole’s location, then click once to add details or a
photo.

11. Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) partnered with SeeClickFix to
produce the pothole map.

12. Note the number of issues (open, closed) at the top.

13. Lessons Learned
1. Sometimes you can find the technology
needed to produce a project (you don’t need
to create it)
2. A project started in 2010 continued being
used in 2014
3. Citizens used the map itself to report the
location of potholes (instead of sending
location in email, by SMS, etc.)
MPR potholes map

14. Example: Mumbai attacks November 2008

15. “The Mumbaiattacks haveunleasheda storm
of live updatesfromresidents, swellingtraffic
and contenton sites suchas Twitterand
Yahoo Inc.’s photoWeb siteFlickr.A
Google mapon the attack sites was swiftly
putup. A lengthy entry about the attackson
user-generatedonline encyclopedia
Wikipediasurfacedin less than an hour.”
—The Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2008

16. Wikipedia was used as a reporting platform Current page

17. Wikipedia was used as a reporting platform As seen on November 26, 2008

18. Updates were made every 2–3 minutes Wikipedia history: 2008 Mumbai attacks

19. Google map: Mumbai attacks 2008 Mumbai attacks

20. Google map: Mumbai attacks
“Al Jazeera English tracked the points
of the attack with the help of users
from Google and Twitter.”

21. Google map: Mumbai attacks
“Al Jazeera English tracked the points
of the attack with the help of users
from Google and Twitter.”

22. Flickr: Immediate photos
“Journalist Vinukumar Ranganathan’s
stream of photos were published by CNN
and other major broadcasters.”

23. Flickr: Immediate photos
“Journalist Vinukumar Ranganathan’s
stream of photos were published by CNN
and other major broadcasters.”

24. Twitter:Astream of updates and live reports Twitter search: Nov. 27, 2008

25. Lessons Learned
1. Using all kinds of Web sites (Wikipedia,
Twitter, Flickr), the audience can report on an
event without help from journalists
2. Journalists from Al Jazeera English used
Google Maps to aggregate citizen reports
from Twitter and other sites
3. Again, social media can assist journalists in
gathering information during a crisis
Mumbai attacks

26. Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of
taking a task traditionally performed by
a designated agent (usually an employee)
and outsourcing it
to an undefined, generally large group of people
in the form of an open call.
Definition
—Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of
the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business (2008)

27. Example: Investigating MPs’ expenses 2008–2009

28. A crowd of
snoops
What:
All expense claims
Who:
646 Members of
Parliament (MPs)
Time span:
Five years
(2004–2008)
Total
documents:
2 million

29. Question:
How do the reporters
at one newspaper sort through
2 million electronic documents?

30. Answer:
They don’t.

31. The Guardian: “Investigate your MP’s expenses” 2009

32. Simon Willison, a
28-year-old
programmer who
works for the
newspaper,
worked hard to
make it easy for
people to join in
and evaluate the
documents quickly.
Result: 170,000
documents were
reviewed in the
first 80 hours after
the site went
online.
Making it fun

33. Result: For many famous MPs, all of their
documents were analyzed.
2009

34. Lessons Learned
1. People will contribute their time and their
intelligence without any reward if each task is
small and not difficult.
2. Journalists can ask the audience to help
even in a case where no crisis exists.
3. The journalists (and programmers) must do
some work to make the task seem interesting
and fun.
Investigating MPs’ expenses

35. Crowdsourcing
(and maps)
Mindy McAdams
mmcadams@jou.ufl.edu
@macloo