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Crowdsourcing & Pop Culture

In reading about the topics this week, crowdsourcing stood out to me as a term I had heard of, knew a little bit about, but hadn't ever really given much thought to. The more I read about it though, the more I kept thinking about different ways I've seen, or even been apart of, crowdsourcing. In the article,  Stolen snow shovels and good ideas: The search for and generation of local knowledge in the social media community (Konsti-Laakso, S. 2017), the authors provide a literature review on online communities and crowdsourcing. The article references "three basic components of crowdsourcing: individuals (the crowd), an organization looking to benefit from the crowd's inputs and an online platform through which the communication occurs (Nam, 2012)." 

There are lots of examples of crowdsourcing, the article above makes reference to government policies that are affected through crowdsourcing, other articles discuss scientific ideas that were assisted through crowdsourcing, but some famous ones you might be familiar with also include: 
Lay's "Do Us a Flavor" 

Based on the three components described above, what about reality/voting TV shows, would those be categorized as crowdsourcing?  They are made up of individuals, they benefit from a crowd's input (this is how contestants are kept on or voted off the show) and the voting mostly occurs online, although it can occasionally occur over the phone. I would think that much in the way the crowd votes for its favorite potato chip flavor, it is also choosing its next American Idol. 

I'm not much for reality TV or the talent competitions, however every so often I get invested in a good season of Dancing with the Stars (Tallahassee folks, who didn't like seeing David Ross out there??), now I can't help but think, is it all just great crowdsourcing keeping these shows going? Here's an interview from Entrepreneur.com that provides more information about crowdsourcing, it's implications for businesses and thoughts on how it's changing. 






References:

Konsti-Laakso, S. (2017). Stolen snow shovels and good ideas: The search for and generation of local knowledge in the social media community. Government Information Quarterly, 34(1), 134-139.

Nam, T. (2012). Suggesting frameworks of citizen-sourcing via government 2.0. Gov. Inf. Q., 29(1), 12–20.

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 15, 2018 at 4:48 AM

    Here's another crowdsourcing link that I remember from recent history at our local zoo. I think that this kind of crowdsourcing serves marketing purposes, but it also makes community members feel invested in the zoo, its animals, and to the specific endangered species. Hopefully, such campaigns spur at least some participants to investigate further and become even more engaged in protecting wildlife. https://www.palmbeachzoo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.details&ArticleId=500014&returnTo=main

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