Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing the Celtic Bard: Wandering Minstrels and Mournful Harps

by Karen McAulay

Paper given at IAML(UK and Irl) Annual Study Weekend, Cardiff, April 2012.  This is the powerpoint of my presentation.  There is currently no written-out text, though it will hopefully appear as an article in Brio in due course.

A musicologist specialising in historic Scottish song collections describes the crowdsourcing and social media... more A musicologist specialising in historic Scottish song collections describes the crowdsourcing and social media methodology used to broaden her scope to embrace early Welsh harp and song collections as well.

The significance of the bard and his harp in Celtic music are then discussed, and some parallels drawn between Scottish and Welsh sources of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Massively distributed authorship of academic papers

by Marco Lazzari

Bill Tomlinson, Paul, Eric P. S. Baumer, Donald J. Patterson, Joseph Corneli, Martin Mahaux, Syavash Nobarany, Marco Lazzari, Birgit Penzenstadler, Andrew W. Torrance, David J. Callele, Gary M. Olson, Six Silberman, Marcus Ständer, Fabio Romancini Palamedi, Albert Ali Salah, Eric Morrill, Xavier Franch, Florian 'Floyd' Mueller, Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye, Rebecca W. Black, Marisa L. Cohn, Patrick C. Shih, Johanna Brewer, Nitesh Goyal, Pirjo Näkki, Jeff Huang, Nilufar Baghaei, Craig Saper
"Massively distributed authorship of academic papers"
Proceedings of Alt.Chi at the 30th ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI 2012), Austin, TX, USA, 2012

Wiki-like or crowdsourcing models of collaboration can provide a number of benefits to academic work. These techniques... more Wiki-like or crowdsourcing models of collaboration can provide a number of benefits to academic work. These techniques may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially increase productivity. This paper presents a model of massively distributed collaborative authorship of academic papers. This model, developed by a collective of thirty authors, identifies key tools and techniques that would be necessary or useful to the writing process. The process of collaboratively writing this paper was used to discover, negotiate, and document issues in massively authored scholarship. Our work provides the first extensive discussion of the experiential aspects of large-scale collaborative research.

Multi-layer crisis mapping: a social media-based approach

by Babiga Birregah

Co-authored with Tony Top, Charles Perez, Eric Chˆatelet, Nada Matta, Marc Lemercier and Hichem Snoussi

During the sudden catastrophic events that have
occurred in this last decade, social media have proven their... more During the sudden catastrophic events that have
occurred in this last decade, social media have proven their importance
in the creation and management of ad-hoc crisis communities.
These platforms are increasingly used as complementary
support tools for conventional crisis management teams.
Recent disasters (e.g. Haiti, Australia, Japan, Mexico, etc.)
have demonstrated their real potential in providing support to
emergency operations for crisis management. However, several
questions remain unanswered regarding the efficiency of their
usage and especially their integration into the conventional
information collection systems (technological sensors, cameras,
SMS, etc.) usually used for crisis mapping. This paper aims to
present multi-layer crisis mapping using a social media-based
approach. We propose a generic step-by-step methodology as
an integrated approach that connects a set of needs to a set of
appropriate responses. The concept presented in this paper is
the need/solution matrix, which plays a key role in the design
of a multi-layer crisis map. The paper ends with an experiment
with the well-known Twitter microblogging platform.

As You Can See: Applying Visual Collaborative Filtering to Works of Art

by Gerhard Jan Nauta

published in Digital Humanities Quarterly

Art historically relevant visual knowledge can be deconstructed and the resulting components of this visual knowledge... more Art historically relevant visual knowledge can be deconstructed and the resulting components of this visual knowledge — visual discernments — lend themselves to be socially negotiated. Individual visual experts (like connoisseurs) do not share some grand and undividable cognitive cataloguing system; they are attentive to piecemeal visual discernments and the patterns in which these occur in reality. In conventional scholarly communication sophisticated tools to discuss perceptual patterns are lacking. This paper not only proposes a theoretical model of visual knowledge accumulation, but also describes a practical implementation, Art.Similarities, which is designed as a prototype of such a sophisticated tool. Using a custom-made interface it records visual behavior: the non-verbally expressed visual similarity judgments of distributed individuals. Users can be assigned to groups according to the qualities of their judgments. These qualities may be distilled from emerging similarity patterns. The implications of individual judgments in different user groups may vary considerably. Emerging patterns can be assessed both according to human analysis and statistical procedures. Most studies on art evaluation are attentive to either the characteristics of works, or the characteristics of observers. In this study both are considered as interdependent entities consistently.

VIRALNET: A WAY TO MAKE SHORT-RANGE MESSAGES INSTANTLY VIRAL

by eiman kanjo

ACM Digital Library, New York, NY, USA ©2012
ISBN: 978-1-4503-1327-8
doi>10.1145/2222444.2222454

Bluetooth, WiFi, and NFC are considered to be low power, affordable and available on most mobile handsets. However,... more Bluetooth, WiFi, and NFC are considered to be low power, affordable and available on most mobile handsets. However, these types of wireless mediums are classified as short links since their communication ranges are limited to ~100meters for WiFi and ~10 meters in the case of Bluetooth which seems to stifle the full usefulness of the service. In this paper, we propose a new wireless network concept called ViralNet, solely dependent on the mobile devices in the vicinity using principles of opportunistic networking. ViralNet allow new type of communications beyond the short-range limit which can be used to connect to other phones and sensors distributed in the environment. A message can be turned instantly viral. An authentic user or a monitoring device sends a message to others nearby and they do the same without internet connection. This can open the door to completely new type of applications ranging from emergency evacuation in crowded areas to citizen reportage, if the authorities want to keep an image from escaping the scene, they must confiscate hundreds or thousands of mobile phones.

Motivations for Participation in Socially Networked Collective Intelligence Systems

by Jon Chamberlain

Twittamentary: Crowdsourcing a Project (case)

by Michael Netzley

case study

Tan Siok Siok, a Singaporean filmmaker living in Beijing, decided to make a documentary about Twitter using Twitter to... more Tan Siok Siok, a Singaporean filmmaker living in Beijing, decided to make a documentary about Twitter using Twitter to source for the film’s content. Twitter, sometimes called a microblog, is essentially a short messaging service over the Internet. Rather than make this film using classic and highly centralized methods, Tan decided to crowdsource the content, financing, and distribution outlets. Crowdsourcing, according to Jeff Howe, is “the act of taking a job 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.”

The Twittamentary website was launched in August 2009 with the invitation to, “Share a great story that answers the question: what is the most interesting thing that happened to you because of Twitter?” The project began with no clear vision of the final story, the source of the financing, or the cinemas or the auditoriums the film would be played in.

If successful, all the pieces of this puzzle would come together as Twitter users from around the globe volunteered their stories and the needed resources.If successful, this experiment in filmmaking might change filmmaking by offering artists an alternate path around development hell.

Barriers to Appropriate Technology Growth in Sustainable Development

by Joshua Pearce

I. Zelenika  and J.M. Pearce, “Barriers to Appropriate Technology Growth in Sustainable Development”, Journal of Sustainable Development 4(6), 12-22 (2011).

Given the urgency of development problems world-wide, as well as the opportunities of open source appropriate... more Given the urgency of development problems world-wide, as well as the opportunities of open source appropriate technology (OSAT) to help expedite sustainable development goals, a better understanding of the barriers limiting the scaling of OSAT is needed. In this study, key organizations and researchers working in the field of appropriate technology (AT) were interviewed to identify barriers to OSAT. The data was analyzed via pattern coding and content analysis. Results reveal that among the most pressing problems for those working in the field of AT were the need for better communication and collaboration between the agencies and communities to share the knowledge and resources, and to work in partnership. Specific barriers include: i) AT seen as inferior or “poor person's” technology, ii) technical transferability and robustness of AT, iii) insufficient funding, iv) weak institutional support, and v) the challenges of distance and time in tackling rural poverty. Finally, future work is outlined to better understand and overcome these barriers.

Emerging practices in the cultural heritage domain-social tagging of audiovisual heritage

by Lora Aroyo

Examining Social Barriers to Open Source Appropriate Technology and Innovation through Collaboration with Information and Communication Technology

by Joshua Pearce

Ivana Zelenika-Zovko and Joshua M. Pearce, “Examining Social Barriers to Open Source Appropriate Technology and Innovation through Collaboration with Information and Communication Technology”, 17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference pp.507-508, 2011.

Tanja Aitamurto (2011) New ecosystem in journalism: Decentralized newsrooms empowered by self-organized crowds.

by Tanja Aitamurto

Knowledge Federation 2010: Self-Organizing Collective Mind. Second International Workshop on Knowledge Federation
Dubrovnik, Croatia, October 3-6, 2010.
Edited by Dino Karabeg and Jack Park.

Cartographie 2.0 : le grand public, producteur de contenus et de savoirs géographiques avec le web 2.0

by Boris Mericskay

Cybergeo : European Journal of Geography [En ligne], Science et Toile, article 552

La convergence des SIG avec les TIC (Internet, téléphonie mobile) et les systèmes de géolocalisation (GPS) se traduit... more La convergence des SIG avec les TIC (Internet, téléphonie mobile) et les systèmes de géolocalisation (GPS) se traduit aujourd'hui par l’émergence d’une nouvelle forme de cartographie reposant sur les techniques et les principes du web 2.0. Poussée par les technologies de l’information, la cartographie traditionnellement réservée aux professionnels prend aujourd’hui place au sein de nos pratiques quotidiennes. Au-delà d’un artefact marketing, cette « cartographie 2.0 » qui permet au grand public de lire et d’écrire les cartes pose de nombreuses questions sur la (potentielle) place des amateurs dans des cadres professionnels (mise à jour des bases de données, collecte sur le terrain, production collaborative de référentiels, etc.). Cet article porte sur l’acquisition de connaissance géographique grâce à des populations non-spécialistes. Plus spécifiquement, il explore les potentialités de la cartographie du Web 2.0 pour les sciences citoyennes, terme utilisé pour décrire l'engagement des citoyens dans le processus de collecte de données scientifiques.

GeoWeb and crisis management: issues and perspectives of volunteered geographic information

by Boris Mericskay

Article sous presse Geojournal - DOI: 10.1007/s10708-011-9423-9
Stephane Roche, Eliane Propeck-Zimmermann and Boris Mericskay

Mapping, and more generally geopositioning, has become ubiquitous on the Internet. This democratization of geomatics... more Mapping, and more generally geopositioning, has become ubiquitous on the Internet. This democratization of geomatics through the GeoWeb results in the emergence of a new form of mapping based on Web 2.0 technologies. Described as Web-mapping 2.0, it is especially characterized by high interactivity and geolocation-based contents generated by users. A series of recent events (hurricanes, earthquakes, pandemics) have urged the development of numerous mapping Web applications intended to provide information to the public, and encourage their contribution to support crisis management. This new way to produce and spread geographic information in times of crisis brings up many questions and new potentials with regard to urgency services, Non Governmental Organisations (NGO), as well as individuals. This paper aims at putting into perspective the development of GeoWeb, both in terms of technologies and applications, against crisis management processes.

Overview of EIREX 2011: Crowdsourcing

by Jorge Morato

Julián Urbano, Diego Martín, Mónica Marrero, Jorge Morato. arXiv.org > cs > arXiv:1203.0518. January 2012

The second Information Retrieval Education through EXperimentation track (EIREX 2011) was run at the University Carlos... more The second Information Retrieval Education through EXperimentation track (EIREX 2011) was run at the University Carlos III of Madrid, during the 2011 spring semester. EIREX 2011 is the second in a series of experiments designed to foster new Information Retrieval (IR) education methodologies and resources, with the specific goal of teaching undergraduate IR courses from an experimental perspective. For an introduction to the motivation behind the EIREX experiments, see the first sections of [Urbano et al., 2011a]. For information on other editions of EIREX and related data, see the website at this http URL The EIREX series have the following goals: a) to help students get a view of the Information Retrieval process as they would find it in a real-world scenario, either industrial or academic; b) to make students realize the importance of laboratory experiments in Computer Science and have them initiated in their execution and analysis; c) to create a public repository of resources to teach Information Retrieval courses; d) to seek the collaboration and active participation of other Universities in this endeavor. This overview paper summarizes the results of the EIREX 2011 track, focusing on the creation of the test collection and the analysis to assess its reliability.

Overview of EIREX 2011: Crowdsourcing

by Jorge Morato

Julián Urbano, Diego Martín, Mónica Marrero, Jorge Morato. arXiv.org > cs > arXiv:1203.0518. January 2012

The second Information Retrieval Education through EXperimentation track (EIREX 2011) was run at the University Carlos... more The second Information Retrieval Education through EXperimentation track (EIREX 2011) was run at the University Carlos III of Madrid, during the 2011 spring semester. EIREX 2011 is the second in a series of experiments designed to foster new Information Retrieval (IR) education methodologies and resources, with the specific goal of teaching undergraduate IR courses from an experimental perspective. For an introduction to the motivation behind the EIREX experiments, see the first sections of [Urbano et al., 2011a]. For information on other editions of EIREX and related data, see the website at this http URL The EIREX series have the following goals: a) to help students get a view of the Information Retrieval process as they would find it in a real-world scenario, either industrial or academic; b) to make students realize the importance of laboratory experiments in Computer Science and have them initiated in their execution and analysis; c) to create a public repository of resources to teach Information Retrieval courses; d) to seek the collaboration and active participation of other Universities in this endeavor. This overview paper summarizes the results of the EIREX 2011 track, focusing on the creation of the test collection and the analysis to assess its reliability.

Crisis Mapping Intelligence Information during the Libyan Civil War: An Exploratory Case Study

by Steve Stottlemyre

Coauthored with Sonia Stottlemyre, Georgetown Public Policy Institute (Under Review).

In late April 2011, the operators of The Voices Feeds website called a source in Tripoli to collect data about the... more In late April 2011, the operators of The Voices Feeds website called a source in Tripoli to collect data about the ground situation in the midst of an Internet blackout. The data they collected was then translated into English, and posted as information to the @feb17voices Twitter feed, reading, “LPC #Tripoli: Eyewitness says there are 200-250 cars with mounted guns on standby at tobacco factory. #Libya.” Found by @dovenews, a Twitter user making map overlays depicting the crisis in Libya, this information was then added to a situation map of Tripoli. The map, which was an amalgamation of information collected from multiple sources, was disseminated on May 14, 2011 through the @LibyaMap Twitter feed, and hashtagged #Tripoli to make it easy for interested parties, from the news media to NATO, to find with a simple Twitter search.

The situation described above was not an isolated incident. Similar events were common throughout the Libyan Civil War. On many occasions, social network users took the initiative to collect and process data for use in the rebellion against the Qadhafi regime. Indeed, this data, in some cases, was processed in a way to make it easily consumable by NATO and coalition forces in their eventual enforcement of a No Fly Zone over Libya in mid-2011. Did social network users and crisis mappers spontaneously create tactical intelligence?

Some argue that to take advantage of open source information available through the Internet, organizations like NATO must first tackle the challenge of “determining how to deal with the huge amount of unstructured data in a useful and/or meaningful way.” On the contrary, this article argues a large amount of relevant data was processed into a usable form by crisis mappers in 2011, and demonstrates how Twitter users fused crowd sourced data to create tactical intelligence in an attempt to affect the outcome of the Libyan Civil War. By observing data from users who frequently used the #NATO and #Libya hashtags during the Libya crisis, and matching emergent patterns to the Joint Intelligence Process (NATO’s theoretical basis for the creation of intelligence), we show that some Libya crisis mappers disseminated their maps, whether they knew it or not, as part of a process that ensured intelligence was produced as part of the war effort.

Wu Ming e l'arte del Campionamento: Bit generation e cultura del remix

by Tiziano Bonini

published in: Canova Gianni (a cura di), Drammaturgie multimediali, Milano, Unicopli., 2009

Se da un lato la pratica dell'appropriazione e della rielaborazione di forme culturali precedenti è sempre esistita –... more Se da un lato la pratica dell'appropriazione e della rielaborazione di forme culturali precedenti è sempre esistita – i romani hanno “remixato” l'antica Grecia (secondo la feconda metafora di Lev Manovich) – oggi si sta estendendo ad ogni dominio della produzione culturale. Un grafico che lavora su un poster e un musicista che costruisce un brano remixano entrambi vecchie composizioni. Difficilmente creano qualcosa ex-novo. E soprattutto condividono lo stesso continuum tecnologico: il computer come mezzo di produzione e comunicazione del proprio lavoro. Usano quindi le stesse applicazioni: “taglia e incolla”, zoom, modifica di variabili (colori, tonalità, font, volumi, frequenze, equalizzazioni, ecc..). Il computer si è sostituito al pennello, alla macchina da scrivere, allo strumento musicale, è diventata una “remediation machine”: una macchina in grado di simulare e contenere media precedenti. Bolter e Grusin chiamano “remediation” la “rappresentazione di un medium all'interno di un altro”3. Ogni nuovo medium, secondo loro, non fa che “rimediare” quelli precedenti. L'analisi di Bolter e Grusin era già stata anticipata da uno dei padri dell'informatica, Alan Kay, che già negli anni settanta descriveva il computer come un metamedium:

"Il computer è un medium che può simulare dinamicamente le caratteristiche di altri mezzi di comunicazione. Non è uno strumento, anche se può prendere il posto di molti strumenti. E' il primo metamedium, e possiede un grado di libertà di rappresentazione ed espressione mai incontrati prima d'ora e mai investigati".


La differenza con l'antichità è soprattutto quantitativa. Abbiamo più materiale a disposizione per il remix (internet) e abbiamo strumenti che ci facilitano nel remix (software e applicazioni web). Al momento però gli unici campi dove il remix e il campionamento sono stati istituzionalizzati, “sdoganati” e considerati legittimi sono la musica e la programmazione informatica, eppure pratiche di replicabilità simili le troviamo in altri domini dell'arte, dalla letteratura al cinema alla fotografia al design.

Analizzeremo queste pratiche dalla musica alla rete e nell'ultima parte ci concentreremo sulla letteratura, un dominio dove le pratiche di remix sono ormai state ampiamente incorporate tra le tattiche di scrittura degli autori ma senza una esplicita legittimazione.

Free Maps for the World

by Javier Carranza Tresoldi

Published spanish version in Geocensos.com

It is currently possible to have free access to abundant online geographical information using very good solutions.... more It is currently possible to have free access to abundant online geographical information using very good solutions. From global projects with widespread impact as Google Maps or Bing to other more technical and specialized as ArcGis.com and OpenStreetMap, users feel at ease when it comes to know and update remote places in the world.This commendable effort of the technological global Commonwealth raises however some disturbing questions: who owns the rights to these maps generated by so many people in key locations? . And other questions as well.

Crowdsourcing, citizen sensing and sensor web technologies for public and environmental health surveillance and crisis management: trends, OGC standards and application examples

by David Crowley

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH GEOGRAPHICS

’Wikification of GIS by the masses’ is a phrase-term first coined by Kamel Boulos in 2005, two years earlier than... more ’Wikification of GIS by the masses’ is a phrase-term first coined by Kamel Boulos in 2005, two years earlier than Goodchild’s term ‘Volunteered Geographic Information’. Six years later (2005-2011), OpenStreetMap and Google Earth (GE) are now full-fledged, crowdsourced ‘Wikipedias of the Earth’ par excellence, with millions of users contributing their own layers to GE, attaching photos, videos, notes and even 3-D (three dimensional) models to locations in GE. From using Twitter in participatory sensing and bicycle-mounted sensors in pervasive environmental sensing, to creating a 100,000-sensor geo-mashup using Semantic Web technology, to the 3-D visualisation of indoor and outdoor surveillance data in real-time and the development of next-generation, collaborative natural user interfaces that will power the spatially-enabled public health and emergency situation rooms of the future, where sensor data and citizen reports can be triaged and acted upon in real-time by distributed teams of professionals, this paper offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of the overlapping domains of the Sensor Web, citizen sensing and ‘human-in-the-loop sensing’ in the era of the Mobile and Social Web, and the roles these domains can play in environmental and public health surveillance and crisis/disaster informatics. We provide an in-depth review of the key issues and trends in these areas, the challenges faced when reasoning and making decisions with real-time crowdsourced data (such as issues of information overload, “noise”, misinformation, bias and trust), the core technologies and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards involved (Sensor Web Enablement and Open GeoSMS), as well as a few outstanding project implementation examples from around the world.

Journalism Innovation and Participation: An Analysis of the Knight News Challenge

by Seth Lewis

Lewis, S. C. (2011). Journalism Innovation and Participation: An Analysis of the Knight News Challenge. International Journal of Communication, 5, 1623-1648. URL: http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/1140

In recent years, the Knight News Challenge has emerged as one of the most important forums for stimulating innovation... more In recent years, the Knight News Challenge has emerged as one of the most important forums for stimulating innovation in journalism and as a salient marker of the Knight Foundation’s influence in the field. However, scholarly literature has yet to discuss this contest’s design and execution, its applicants and winners, and the implications for the future of journalism that may be revealed in this process. This study examines content analysis data for nearly 5,000 applications to the Knight News Challenge, exploring the distinguishing features of its applicants, finalists, and winners. This analysis is presented against the backdrop of a key conceptual question for journalism in the 21st century: how does it reconcile the growing tension between professional control and open participation? Results suggest that finalists and winners more often use forms of participation and distributed knowledge (i.e., crowdsourcing and user manipulation) and other features not typically associated with journalism (e.g., software development). These findings are placed in the context of the Knight Foundation’s broader efforts to shape journalism innovation.