Paper:
Aitamurto, T. (2015). Motivation Factors in Crowdsourced Journalism: Social Impact, Social Change, and Peer Learning. International Journal of Communication, 9(0), 21. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3481/1502
Discussion Leader: Rifat Sabbir Mansur
Summary:
Crowdsourcing journalism has recently become a more common knowledge-search method among professional journalists where participants contribute to journalistic process by sharing their individual knowledge. Crowdsourcing can be used for both participatory, where the crowd contributes raw materials to a process run by a journalist, and citizen journalism, ordinary people adopt the role of journalist. Unlike outsourcing where the task is relied on a few known experts or sources, crowdsourcing opens up the tasks for anybody to participate voluntarily or for monetary gain. This research paper tries to explain crowd’s motivation factors for crowdsourced journalism based on social psychological theories by asking the two following questions:
- Why do people contribute to crowdsourced journalism?
- What manifestations of knowledge do the motivation factors depict?
The author tries to seek the motivation factors in crowdsourcing, commons-based peer production, and citizen journalism using self-determination theory in social psychology. According to the theory human motivations are either intrinsic, done for enjoyment or community-based obligation, or extrinsic, done for direct rewards such as money. The author reviews various papers where she found both forms of motivation factors for crowdsourcing, commons-based peer production, and citizen journalism. In the later part of the paper, the author introduces four journalistic processes which use crowdsources, conducted in-depth interviews with many of the participators in the crowdsourcing, and processed her findings based on that.
The cases the author uses are as following:
- Inaccuracies in physics schoolbooks
- Quality problems in Finnish products and services
- Gender inequalities in Math and Science Education
- Home Loan Interest Map
The first 3 stories were published in various magazines and the later one was conducted on Sweden’s leading daily newspaper. The first 3 stories were further categorized to Case A since the same journalists worked on all three stories. The 4th story used a crowdmap where the crowd submitted information about their mortgages and interest rates online. The information were then geographically located and visualized. It became very popular breaking online traffic records for the newspaper.
The author conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 participants in Case A and 5 online participants in Case B. The interview data were then analyzed by Strauss and Corbin’s analytical coding system. With these analyzed data the author presented her findings.
The author posits that based on her findings the main motivation factors for participating in crowdsourced journalism are as follows:
- Possibility of having an impact
- Ensuring accuracy and adding diversity for a balanced view
- Decreasing knowledge and power asymmetries
- Peer learning
- Deliberation
The findings from the author shows that the motivations above are mostly intrinsic. Only the motivation for peer learning the participants expressed to have the desire to learn from others’ knowledge and practice their skill, making it extrinsic in nature with its intrinsic nature of a better understanding of others. None of the participants expected any financial compensation for their participation. They rather found themselves rewarded as their voices were heard. The participants also believed monetary compensation could lead to false information. The participation in crowdsourced journalism is mainly volunteer in nature having altruistic motivations. The intrinsic factors in the motivations mostly derived from the participators’ ideology, values, social and self-enhancement drives.
The nature of crowdsource journalism are to some extent different from commons-based peer production, citizen journalism, and other crowdsourcing contexts as the former have neither career advancement nor reputation enhancement unlike the later. Rather the participants perceive journalism as being a part to social change.
The author brings the theories of digital labor abuse and refutes it by showing results suggesting the argument does not fit to the empirical reality of online participation.
The author finally discusses about several limitations of the research and scope for future research using larger samples, numerous cases, and empirical contexts in several countries including both active and passive participators of the crowd.
Reflection:
The study in the paper had profound social psychological analysis on the motivations of the participators in crowdsourcing. Unlike prior researches the paper involves itself with motivation factors in voluntary-based crowdsourcing i.e. crowdsourcing without pecuniary rewards. The author also tried to address the motivations on crowdsourcing, commons-based peer production, and citizen journalism separately. This allowed her to dig deeper into the intrinsic and extrinsic drives of the motivations. The author also further classifies intrinsic motivations into 2 factors, such as, enjoyment-based and obligation/community-based.
The study revealed some very interesting points. As the author mentions that having an impact drives participation. This is one of the main motivations in the crowd participators. One specific comment:
“I hope my comment will end up in the story, because we have to change the conditions. Maybe I should go back to the site, to make sure my voice is heard, and comment again?”
I find this comment very interesting because this shows nature of the intrinsic motivation and the unwritten moral obligation the participators feel towards their topic of interest. Here, the participator’s motivation is clearly to bring social change.
Another interesting factor, in my opinion, is that volunteering involves sharing one’s fortune (e.g., products, knowledge, and skills) to protect oneself from feeling guilty about being fortunate. The author mentions this as the protective function that drives volunteer work.
In my opinion, one of the clear good sides of crowd participation is developing a more accurate picture of the topic and offering multiple perspectives. The role of filling the knowledge gaps in a particular topic in the journalists’ understanding helps build a more accurate and full picture. It also provides a check for yellow journalism. This also allows participators to contribute with multiple perspectives creating diverse views about controversial topics.
What I found interesting is that the participants did not expect financial compensation for their participation in crowdsourcing. On the contrary they believed if this effort was monetarily compensated, it could actually be dangerous and skew participation. However, with pecuniary rewards the tasks draws a different group of crowd who are more aware of the responsibilities. This might actually encourage people to be more attentive participators and more aware about their comments/remarks.
Another interesting notion of the paper is that, the participants in this study did not expect reciprocity in the form of knowledge exchange. This characteristic, in my opinion, could arise the situation of firmly holding onto one’s false belief. The fact that the participators want to be a part of a social change they can be disheartened if their volunteer efforts were not appropriately addressed in the journalistic process.
I liked the author’s endeavor to address the differences and similarities between motivations in crowdsourced journalism. In crowdsourced journalism, the crowd contributes only small pieces of raw material to a journalist to consider in the story process. Cumulatively, it can produce a bigger picture of an issue. By this way participators of the crowdsourcing can be a contributing part of a social change with their respective atomic inputs.
The limitations of the study, however, has great significance. The author mentions that it is possible that only those participants who had a positive experience with crowdsourcing accepted the interview request for the study. This might have caused the motivations in the study to be more intrinsic and altruistic in nature. With a different and widespread sample, the study might reveal some more interesting factors of human psychology.
Questions:
- What do you think about the differences between voluntary and reward-based crowdsourcing in terms of social impact?
- What do you think about the effects of citizen journalism on professional media journalism?
- Given the limitations, do you the case studies had adequate data to back up its findings?
- What do you think the future holds about the moderation of crowdsourcing?
- The study suggests a wide variety of crowd contribution like crowd-mapping, citizen journalism, common-based peer production, etc. How do you think we can develop systems to better handle the crowd’s contribution?
