Crowdsourcing and Digital Democracy

Crowdsourcing....what is it?  Daren C. Brabham defines it as "an online, distributed problem-solving and production model that has emerged in recent years". Crowdsourcing is not always a proper technique, but many times it is.  Brabham also discusses James Surowiecki's book "The Wisdom of Crowds" and his statement that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them".  It is essentially brainstorming in mass instead of a small group in-person.  Coca-Cola is a company who remains at the peak of the innovative curve, and crowdsourcing is one of their avenues they use to remain there.  Its "Shaping A Better Future" theme is a part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) and asks entrepreneurs to assist them in creating projects for youth employment, education, the environment, and health.  They also take suggestions via social media to market their products.  I think another prime example of crowdsourcing properly being used is when Ford loaned out Fiestas to applicants with a massive social media following and sent them out on community projects nationwide to market the car as well as implement innovative ideas shared with the "creative communities of participation" (Allocca, TEDTalk).  It was tremendously successful. An example of when crowdsourcing was not the proper technique was when Walmart was promoting its "Energy Sheets" and offered on their Facebook page to send the Rapper Pitbull to the store location with the most likes in its online poll.  A group was formed out of mischief and humor to counter the campaign that actually won the vote to send the rapper to Alaska.  This was a market failure for Walmart.

Crowdsourcing is usually extremely effective when the organization establishes a clear, well-orchestrated campaign that gives their target audience a strong incentive and tangible benefit to participate.  An example is when Lay's ran a contest called "Do Us A Flavor" and asked people to create their newest flavor.  A professional judging panel narrowed it down to three flavors (so the crazy ones were weeded out) and the Facebook audience voted.  The winner received $1 million or 1% of the net sales in 2013.  As far as viral videos, the ones that I have watched have mostly been ones that make me laugh.  My husband and I love videos of toddlers doing the crazy things that ours does.  On the other hand, many organizations are using crowdsourcing to solve a problem and then create a video that hopefully goes viral.  Volkswagen did this in 2011 when they asked people to submit innovative vehicle ideas.  The winner was the Hover car and it went viral immediately, which attracted worldwide attention and profitability.  As long as the strategy for crowdsourcing involves a clear vision and a way to target participants with the proper knowledge to invest their input, the outcome should be substantial and effective.

Another facet to "living through the largest increase in human expressive capability in history" (Clay Shirky) is digital democracy and "leading politics back to being the power of ideas instead of the cult of personality.  Digital technology is the best way to communicate ideas, and democracy is the best means of realizing those ideas.  America will be better off because political discussion will be driven more by the electorate; and when the electorate is engaged, it becomes more participatory.  That's good for democracy" (David Winston).  As an optimist, some of the changes that digital communications will incur are empowering individuals to deliver meaningful content, and political conversations becoming constant and in real time consistent with news coverage.  Politicians are going to need to make sure their messages are clear, pertinent, persuasive, personalized, and transparent because "people are demanding more and more interactivity in their communications" (Winston).  The Digital Age is all about communications, content, collaboration and community, and those setting the political agenda will need to hop on the digital train to even be able to play in the ballgame, much less actually win it.  "In this medium, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly are all now the same freedom" (Shirky).  Wow!  Let that soak in.  Part of our civic duty is to make sure that the Internet is actually "leveling the playing field and broadening the diversity of voices being heard instead of reinforcing the socioeconomic divisions that exist and allowing elite viewpoints to dominate online content" (Yasmin Anwar).

In my previous blog I discussed citizen journalism.  Paul Lewis, in his TEDTalk video considers citizen/collaborative journalism "crowdsourcing the news".  This is the medium that allows ordinary people to hold powerful organizations and those is leadership/political positions accountable.  He gave two powerful examples of this tenant actually being upheld.  The first was the case of Ian Tomlinson, a journalist simply trying to find his way home during a protest, who was killed indignantly by police.  Due to the Internet and social media, Paul Lewis was able to proficiently investigate, get the facts straight, verify the information, and have the proper authorities held accountable.  He did this mainly via Twitter because tweets "have an uncanny ability to reach their proper destination.  Once you let go of a piece of information it travels like the wind".  Kevin
Allocca is the Trends Manager at YouTube, and says the way for information and videos to go viral is to reach the tastemakers (i.e. Jimmy Kimmel tweeting the double rainbow video), reaching creative communities of participation (i.e. the Rebecca Black "Friday" video that sparked remixes galore), and unexpectedness (i.e. Casey Neistat holding the city accountable for unfairly issuing him a ticket for not riding in the bike lane).  We need to implement these factors in crowdsourcing as well as establishing digital democracy because almost everyone has access to the information and the audience is who defines the popularity.  Paul Lewis challenges us to be an integral force in journalism as we witness, record, and share important life events.  We are to do this honestly and with integrity.