Today’s day and age is defined not only by the internet, but by the concept of crowdsourcing, or as Mark Briggs refers to it in his book Journalism Next, crowd-powered collaboration.
“Crowdsourcing harnesses the sustained power of communitiy to improve a service or information base,” wrote Briggs.
Upon reading his definitions, I immediately though of Wikipedia. Although it is not acceptable to be used as a credible source in college, it is a great place to start in the research process. It provides users with information that is updated daily.
Crowdsourcing isn’t only applicable to wikipedia, but also to the blogosphere, as well as many other platforms. The more people that are involved, the more information you are able to receive.
Nowadays you can see croudsourcing almost anywhere on the internet. News sites during a storm will ask people to upload photos from a storm which allows other users to see where the storm hit the hardest, people use sites like Ask.Com where anyone can provide answers.
All in all, I think that croudsourcing is a tremendous innovation that has already proven to be extremely beneficial. Though, like all innovations, it could still be refined–like eliminating the possibillity of faulty information on Wikipedia.
I thought that Chapter 3 of Briggs’ book explained croudsourcing very well.
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