Crowdsourcing can engage and empower whole communities

3 December 2009

For the last four months I’ve been running Help Me Investigate, a web platform for crowdsourcing investigative journalism funded by 4iP and Screen West Midlands. It does this by breaking an investigation up into lots of small tasks, or ‘challenges’, which different people can complete based on their own knowledge.

So I guess we’ve joined the crowdsourcing crowd, but this certainly wasn’t about jumping on a bandwagon. When I first came up with the idea for Help Me Investigate two years ago what appealed to me above all was the potential of crowdsourcing to engage people.

I was inspired by the example of the Florida News Press, which wanted to investigate unusually high charges for connecting new homes to the water supply. It asked its readers to help, which they did, extremely successfully. But what was most remarkable was that the story became the most popular on its website, ever, apart from hurricane stories. And this was a story about water connection charges.

So when we launched Help Me Investigate in July this year I was hoping for similar results: for people to be interested in local issues they wouldn’t otherwise read about, because of a social dynamic.

Surprisingly, that’s what happened. When a friend asked about two bus companies running on the same route, I found myself learning about bus deregulation. When someone else helped me identify the organisation responsible for hospital parking, I felt obliged to return the favour by following up on the issue.

And because someone asked “What’s happening with the Birmingham Council website?” a whole bunch of us uncovered a £2.2m overspend - a story that has since rumbled on and on in the local press.

So what have we learned about crowdsourcing? First, you need passion from someone involved. In the beginning, that someone will be you; if you’re lucky you’ll attract other passionate people who can drive it forward further (and you will need to be lucky).

Second, I think it makes a big difference if you are already part of an online community. Help Me Investigate worked well in Birmingham because the team are part of - and put a lot into - that city’s healthy online community.

Third, people need to get something out of the process. That might be the fun of participating, the social connections that engenders, the satisfaction of learning something new, or of getting results. Different people respond to different things, so you may need all of the above.

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