Crowd-sourced News

Overview

"Crowd-sourced news" describes a type of journalism that involves the collection and reporting of information from a large number of people, who often use social media to transmit this information. Crowd-sourced news has become more common in recent years owing to a combination of factors: the development of the Internet and wireless access to the information it contains; the extreme popularity of smartphones and similar devices capable of taking photos, recording audio and video, and transmitting information; and the rapid growth of social media networks that make it possible for users to quickly and easily share content they have created or recorded with large numbers of people all over the world. Crowds have existed throughout history, but only in the last few years have those crowds been made up of people who possess sophisticated technology for recording information. When some type of breaking news takes place, it has become commonplace for regular citizens to almost immediately begin posting photos, streaming live video, and sending messages to loved ones. The information that people share immediately becomes part of the story that is unfolding, as traditional media outlets scramble to obtain permission to republish pictures or videos that are especially compelling.

Further Insights

Crowd-sourced news means different things to different people. One definition of the concept involves a reporter at a traditional news organization, such as a television or radio station, or a newspaper, who finds story leads, witnesses, or other pertinent information by searching social media, or posting a request for assistance on a social network (Shi et al., 2018). This is the type of crowd-sourced news one might see if there were a particularly devastating storm that passed through a city causing major damage. Before the storm had even passed, local reporters would send out messages via Twitter and Facebook, asking anyone experiencing difficulty caused by the storm to reach out and share their story or images. This is a stark contrast with what the reporter's job would have looked like before social media and the Internet, when it would have been necessary to venture out in the storm, look for people in distress, and then try to elicit information from them after verifying that they are safe (Dailey & Starbird, 2014). Or, if a reporter were covering a story about a criminal suspect being sought by police, the reporter might first check the suspect's social media profiles. This could provide clues as to the suspect's whereabouts, but it could also turn up information about the suspect's friends and family, employer, and other contacts, each of whom the reporter could attempt to obtain information from. In essence, this type of crowd-sourced news uses the crowd as a research tool to assist with accessing other information, such as eyewitness accounts of events (Karathanasi et al., 2014).

Another form of crowd-sourced news consists mainly of a journalist explaining trending topics to an audience of those who are not familiar with social media and online communication. Trending topics are simply words or phrases that users of a particular online platform use with great frequency during a short period of time. This generally happens when there is breaking news about political events, celebrities, or natural disasters; as people on the platform find out about the event, they begin to post and reshare information about it. The platform software recognizes the sudden spike in the frequency with which words associated with the topic are added to the platform and may identify the topic as trending, "popular now," or something similar. Once this happens, even more people will join in, after seeing the event listed as a trending topic. A common example of this is seen with major storms. If a hurricane named James were threatening Florida, for example, trending topics might be "Florida hurricane," "Hurricane James," and so forth. From time to time, journalists will find stories to report by turning to social media and looking for trending topics that they can turn into news items (Papacharissi & de Fatima Oliveira, 2012).

The forms of crowd-sourced news discussed thus far are media-driven, because they are undertaken on the initiative of reporters or media outlets. Other types of crowd-sourced news are what might be termed "self-organizing," as they arise out of necessity during extraordinary circumstances. Examples of this are found in the aftermath of natural disasters, when traditional forms of communication tend to break down, and during social and political conflicts in which traditional media are made inaccessible or untrustworthy by those who control them. This tends to happen during revolutions and attempted coups d'etat, where the government takes control of media and uses it to denounce its opposition in an attempt at holding on to power (Budak, Goel, & Rao, 2016). At such times, people have used alternatives to traditional media to share information about what is happening and to coordinate further action; Twitter in particular has seen heavy use, since it can be accessed through the text messaging features found on most mobile phones. A further advantage of a tool like Twitter is that the information being posted is visible to users all over the world, so if a government under siege imposes an information blackout within the country to prevent the outside world from knowing about its efforts to control its population, people can get out the truth about what is happening. For example, a government might report that it is in the process of negotiating with protestors to address their concerns, when in reality it is arresting those it sees as a threat to its power. These arrests could be reported using Twitter or similar means, and other forms of resistance could also be coordinated. As ordinary citizens share information during this type of crisis, the rest of the world obtains a clearer picture of what is happening, thanks to the news reporting being generated by the crowd (Sprugnoli et al., 2017).

Increasingly, people have livestreamed themselves committing crimes, such as mass shootings. Social media platforms generally take such footage down quickly, but in some cases multiple people are livestreaming at once. This was the case on January 6, 2021, when rioters breached the US Capitol in Washington, DC, to stop Congress from certifying the presidential election.

Finally, some forms of crowd-sourced news combine elements of the media-driven and self-organizing forms. The most recognizable instance is seen when traditional media outlets solicit or encourage amateur reporting. There is some similarity between these solicited reports and the type discussed above, where reporters search social media for eyewitness accounts. In both cases, a traditional media outlet locates some type of information that has been gathered by an amateur on the scene of the events and then uses this in its own reporting. The difference with solicited reports is typically that they are more organized and have formal names, such as OnSite, NewsFromU, and so on.

Media outlets often set up a special page on their websites so that viewers can log on and upload their videos, photos, and other types of information, which the outlet then reviews and incorporates into its own reports, if appropriate. Media outlets see major advantages in this type of operation, for a number of reasons. One of these is that instead of having to pay reporters to go out and find stories, gather footage and interviews, and other such tasks, all they have to do is sit back and let the stories come to them, at little or no cost. Another selling point for media outlets is that they can incorporate favorable licensing terms and conditions into the media upload process, so that when a person submits a video or other type of information, they are automatically agreeing to let the media outlet use that information as it sees fit, and for whatever compensation the media outlet chooses to provide, if any. This saves the media outlet the trouble of having to negotiate with someone for the right to broadcast their video of a news event, which often involves payment of substantial sums of money—candid photos or videos of famous people behaving in questionable ways can fetch tens of thousands of dollars, under the right circumstances (Harder, Sevenans, & Van Aelst, 2017).

Issues

Crowd-sourced news raises a number of concerns, with varying degrees of justification. The foremost objection that is made to the idea concerns the reliability of what is being reported. Whenever a story is presented to the public, there is the possibility that it may portray events accurately or that it may portray them in a manner that is distorted or that invites distortion by the viewer. This can happen due to deliberate action, or by chance or accident. When a traditional news source presents information in a biased manner, for whatever reason, there are mechanisms in place to detect this (sometimes before the report is aired or published, as when internal reviews uncover the bias) and to hold the news organization accountable if need be. With crowd-sourced news, this is not necessarily the case, and customary safeguards may offer little protection. One can imagine a situation in which a bystander records and shares a video that claims to show an event unfolding that inspires outrage and ultimately leads to outbreaks of civil unrest in the community. The video may be framed in such a way as to give a false or incomplete impression of the event, thereby inciting a violent reaction under misleading pretenses. There is often little that can be done by the legal system to address situations like these, where intent to cause harm is unclear or absent. More options, however, are available when unreliable crowd-sourced news is clearly intended to convey bias or inspire strong reactions by offering false or misleading interpretations of events. In these cases, legal remedies for libel, slander, or intentional infliction of emotional distress may provide disincentives to engage in such misrepresentations (McCreadie, Macdonald, & Ounis, 2013).

The essential concern many have about crowd-sourced news is that the growing frequency with which it is used seems to demand from society assent to an unwholesome bargain where, in exchange for access to a greater quantity and variety of information, one must pay the price of having less control over what kind of information qualifies as "news." This is seen in the issue of unreliable information, and also in circumstances where crowd-sourced news results in the distribution of inappropriate or graphic material being broadcast and available to anyone with an Internet connection. Just as mobile devices and Internet access make it possible to record touching, unexpected moments with friends and family, they also allow virtually anyone to record scenes of violence, aggression, incivility, nudity, and other content that might be considered inappropriate for younger viewers and out of place in a mature report about current events. A tragic example of this unfolds during traffic accidents, when passing motorists capture footage of the grisly scene of wreckage before authorities can intervene. These recordings may then be shared online—sometimes maliciously and sometimes without malice but with great insensitivity—and ultimately cause great harm to the individuals depicted or their loved ones. As if this were not bad enough, such images can then spread around the Internet, where people of all ages may stumble across them and experience the trauma of the incident vicariously (Guth & Brabham, 2017).

Crowd-sourced news can also be problematic for legal and financial reasons, in addition to its potential to deceive and to exploit suffering. As noted previously, some traditional media outlets encourage crowd-sourced news because it helps to reduce some of their organization's operating expenses. There is certainly nothing wrong in principle with cost reduction, but the problem with crowd-sourced news is that in many cases the media organization benefits at the cost of the individual sharing information. This can happen when a media outlet finds a resource online, such as a photo or video of a news event, and simply uses it in its own reporting without any attribution or acknowledgement of the person who obtained and shared the information. This may deprive that individual of the opportunity to receive credit for their efforts, and may also prevent them from being able to sell the information—it is unlikely that any organization would pay for a video that is already available on the Internet at no cost (Handler & Ferrer Conill, 2016).

Furthermore, this type of behavior is in many cases a violation of copyright law, which grants to the creator of an information-bearing item (such as a photo or video) the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute it. Even when some form of permission is obtained and compensation paid by the media outlet to the creator, the unequal bargaining positions of the two parties may result in the creator receiving only a small fraction of what the information might be worth elsewhere. This happens because many people are eager to have their contribution featured in a media outlet with a large audience, such as a television station or a regional newspaper. In return for having a sizable audience view their creation, they may accept a disproportionately small payment, or even no payment at all.

Bibliography

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