Why Do Crowds Contribute To Crowdsourced Journalism Campaigns?
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A shot from WNYC’s well-known crowd-sourced Cicada Tracker project. See more here: http://project.wnyc.org/cicadas/[/caption]
What do journalists, newsrooms, and contributors stand to gain from participating in a crowdsourced journalism effort?
As part of our forthcoming “Guide To Crowdsourcing” report, Jan Schaffer, Jeanne Pinder and I have written in detail about the advantages newsrooms achieve from running crowdsourced campaigns. Simply put, leveraging the collective intelligence, skills, and time of a willing group of people extends journalists’ resources.
But what does participation in a crowdsourced journalism campaign offer to contributors?
Communities are not monoliths; every individual is motivated by different things. But according to USC professor Daren Brabham, whose research centers around crowdsourcing online, there are general themes that inform collective reasons for participation.
“With journalism, people are just motivated by a higher purpose. They want to tell a story that’s meaningful,” he said in a phone interview. He later added, “People who are really interested do all the work. And they self-select in.”
Brabham explained that participants are often drawn in by issues that they already feel strongly about. So successful campaigns manage to align their subject matter or question with an audience that is already interested in knowing the answer.
Brabham’s research corroborates what practitioners have seen. Mary Hamilton, audience engagement editor for The Guardian US, said that while the news organization focuses on reaching communities with demonstrated interests in a subject, ultimately the real motivation comes from the contributors themselves. For instance, people participated in The Guardian’s recent Counted campaign, she said, because “It’s an issue people care about. It’s something that matters.”
Brabham’s research has also shown that contrary to popular belief, the people who devote the most time to crowdsourced campaigns are often those who have the highest level of expertise. The crowd, as it happens, is not composed of amateurs; it is much more likely to be composed of experts.
“It’s a better use of your time to target people who are experts and already interested in the topic, and then work from there,” Brabham said. “Once you get a hardcore community involved, others will be intrigued by the excitement, and it will bubble up from there.”
The takeaway lessons are apparent: crowdsourcing works best when there’s already an active group of people interested in the topic. This active group often comprises a self-selecting group of specialists who have been thinking about an issue for a substantial period of time. With this in mind, the challenge of crowdsourced data collection is less about mobilizing a group than it is about strategically tapping into an existing network. Though it’s not always an easy task, when it does work, crowdsourcing can be a process that’s beneficial for everyone involved, a perfect marriage between the needs of participants and those of journalists.
