This book offers an in-depth exploration of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in journalism today, and examines their impacts on the broader media landscape. Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing in Journalism looks at how these practices disrupt traditional journalism models, including shifting journalistic norms, professional identity, and the ethical issues at play when journalists turn to social media and the Internet to solicit widespread support. While there is often a lot of hype and hope invested in these practices, this book takes a critical look at the labour involved in crowdsourcing journalism practices, and the evolving relationship between audiences and journalists, including issues of civility in online spaces. The author draws on in-depth interviews with journalists in Canada and the United States, as well as examples from the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Australia, to provide a comprehensive study of increasingly important journalist practices. The book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and journalists who are interested in political economy, journalism studies, and labour studies.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in journalism today, and examines their impacts on the broader media landscape. Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing in Journalism looks at how these practices disrupt traditional journalism models, including shifting journalistic norms, professional identity, and the ethical issues at play when journalists turn to social media and the Internet to solicit widespread support. While there is often a lot of hype and hope invested in these practices, this book takes a critical look at the labour involved in crowdsourcing journalism practices, and the evolving relationship between audiences and journalists, including issues of civility in online spaces. The author draws on in-depth interviews with journalists in Canada and the United States, as well as examples from the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Australia, to provide a comprehensive study of increasingly important journalist practices. The book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and journalists who are interested in political economy, journalism studies, and labour studies.

“The amount of knowledge and talent dispersed among the human race has always outstripped our capacity to harness it. Crowdsourcing ­corrects that—but in doing so, it also unleashes the forces of creative destruction.” —From Crowdsourcing First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired article, “crowdsourcing” describes the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of the specialized few. Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise—it’s talented, creative, and stunningly productive. Crowdsourcing activates the transformative power of today’s technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. It’s a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education, and job history no longer matter; the quality of work is all that counts; and every field is open to people of every imaginable background. If you can perform the service, design the product, or solve the problem, you’ve got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent is employed, research is conducted, and products are made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable. Jeff Howe delves into both the positive and negative consequences of this intriguing phenomenon. Through extensive reporting from the front lines of this revolution, he employs a brilliant array of stories to look at the economic, cultural, business, and political implications of crowdsourcing. How were a bunch of part-time dabblers in finance able to help an investment company consistently beat the market? Why does Procter & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStockphoto and Threadless employ just a handful of people, yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year? The answers lie within these pages. The blueprint for crowdsourcing originated from a handful of computer programmers who showed that a community of like-minded peers could create better products than a corporate behemoth like Microsoft. Jeff Howe tracks the amazing migration of this new model of production, showing the potential of the Internet to create human networks that can divvy up and make quick work of otherwise overwhelming tasks. One of the most intriguing ideas of Crowdsourcing is that the knowledge to solve intractable problems—a cure for cancer, for instance—may already exist within the warp and weave of this infinite and, as yet, largely untapped resource. But first, Howe proposes, we need to banish preconceived notions of how such problems are solved. The very concept of crowdsourcing stands at odds with centuries of practice. Yet, for the digital natives soon to enter the workforce, the technologies and principles behind crowdsourcing are perfectly intuitive. This generation collaborates, shares, remixes, and creates with a fluency and ease the rest of us can hardly understand. Crowdsourcing, just now starting to emerge, will in a short time simply be the way things are done.

Why does Procter & Gamble repeatedly call on enthusiastic amateurs to solve scientific and technical challenges? How can companies as diverse as iStockphoto and Threadless employ just a handful of people, yet generate millions of dollars in revenue every year? "Crowdsourcing" is how the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the responsibility of a specialized few. Jeff Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise–it’s talented, creative, and stunningly productive. It’s also a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education, and job history no longer matter; the quality of the work is all that counts. If you can perform the service, design the product, or solve the problem, you’ve got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent is employed, research is conducted, and products are made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable, and Howe delves into both the positive and negative consequences of this intriguing phenomenon. Through extensive reporting from the front lines of this workplace revolution, he employs a brilliant array of stories to look at the economic, cultural, business, and political implications of crowdsourcing.

A concise introduction to crowdsourcing that goes beyond social media buzzwords to explain what crowdsourcing really is and how it works. Ever since the term “crowdsourcing” was coined in 2006 by Wired writer Jeff Howe, group activities ranging from the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary to the choosing of new colors for M&Ms have been labeled with this most buzz-generating of media buzzwords. In this accessible but authoritative account, grounded in the empirical literature, Daren Brabham explains what crowdsourcing is, what it is not, and how it works. Crowdsourcing, Brabham tells us, is an online, distributed problem solving and production model that leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes set forth by a crowdsourcing organization—corporate, government, or volunteer. Uniquely, it combines a bottom-up, open, creative process with top-down organizational goals. Crowdsourcing is not open source production, which lacks the top-down component; it is not a market research survey that offers participants a short list of choices; and it is qualitatively different from predigital open innovation and collaborative production processes, which lacked the speed, reach, rich capability, and lowered barriers to entry enabled by the Internet. Brabham describes the intellectual roots of the idea of crowdsourcing in such concepts as collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, and distributed computing. He surveys the major issues in crowdsourcing, including crowd motivation, the misconception of the amateur participant, crowdfunding, and the danger of “crowdsploitation” of volunteer labor, citing real-world examples from Threadless, InnoCentive, and other organizations. And he considers the future of crowdsourcing in both theory and practice, describing its possible roles in journalism, governance, national security, and science and health.

Harness the power of the crowd to turn your dreams into reality! Crowdfunding is the newest way to fund projects and start businesses. You don't need to hit up family and friends, max out your credit cards, or get a second mortgage--there are perfect strangers out there who will help you fund your idea. You just have to know how to find them. The Everything Guide to Crowdfunding is a step-by-step handbook to harnessing the power of social media to raise funds. Inside, you'll find real-life case studies and techniques for creating a successful campaign, including: Gaining an online presence Tapping into the crowd Understanding the different crowdfunding platforms Designing a successful campaign plan Promoting your campaign with social media, search engine optimization, and affiliate marketing Dealing with donors after your campaign ends Almost 50 percent of crowdfunding ventures fail to get funded. With this guide, you will learn how to be in the 50 percent that succeed. Whatever your dream or business idea, there is no reason it can't become a reality with the power of crowdfunding.

This book offers a wide range of perspectives and empirical research, providing analyses of crowdfunded projects, the interaction between producers and audiences, and the role that websites such as Kickstarter play in discussions around fan agency and exploitation, as well as the ethics of crowdfunding.