People who live in areas branded as ‘problem communities’ by the media feel disengaged with the news – but hyperlocal citizen journalism offers an opportunity to re-engage citizens. These are the findings of a piece of research from the Netherlands called ‘When News Hurts‘, which measured mainstream coverage of ‘problem communities’ then followed a hyperlocal project which involved local people.

The findings won’t be a big surprise to those running hyperlocal blogs, which often focus on practical steps to improving their area and building civic participation rather than merely telling the stories of failure. But they do offer some lessons for traditional publishers, not just on what they could do better, but on what they’re doing badly in their current coverage – especially the regional publishers who would be expected to provide more ground-level reporting on local issues:

“Remarkably, in spite of being located close to these areas, the regional press hardly differed in their coverage from their national (quality) counterparts [...] National newspapers quoted residents in 23 per cent of their larger reports on Kanaleneiland and 35 per cent of their reports on Overvecht. The regional newspaper quoted residents in only 26 per cent of its larger reports on Kanaleneiland and in 24 per cent of its reports on Overvecht. Unexpectedly, 55 per cent of all news items about a nearby elite neighbourhood (Wittevrouwen) used a resident as source.”

The effect of this, says author Irene Costera Meijer, is “social isolation and stigmatization”:

“‘‘It affects you’’, Hafida (age 25, Dutch-Moroccan) said, later adding: I don’t mind it that much, but, well, in fact I do. Simply how they talk about your neighbourhood, where you live. It makes me think like, hey, what’s going on here?

“Most residents expressed their anger about how reporters systematically reiterated cliches about their immediate environment, if not exaggerating them. As Timon de Jager (57) from Overvecht told us: When something gets into the press, it is always because of a problem in some place; it is covered widely right away, and this makes it seem as if the neighbourhood represents nothing beyond that one big problem.

“… One 54-year-old woman, working and living in Overvecht, explained how her husband had to help out every day, because she was too afraid to open her own garage doors after dark. Not until he died, she discovered when walking her dog, that her feeling of being unsafe was based on misinformation, ‘‘on ignorance and the stories by the media and stories by other residents.’”

What residents needed, it seemed, was more constructive and specific reporting:

“When the story devoted attention to crime or an alleged lack of safety, to degradation or loneliness, most residents would like to see them combined with a solution-oriented frame, a positive and upbeat tone, the use of different perspectives (instead of the conventional ‘‘hearing both sides’’) and a recognizable, concrete setting.”

Hyperlocal journalism, then, emerges as a different way of reporting, which requires non-traditional approaches. There’s a useful exploration of how we normally talk about ‘citizen journalism’ as only providing the opportunity to speak:

“Much of the analysis of mediated communication is modelled on a politics of expression, that is, of speaking up and out, finding a voice, making oneself heard, and so on … In our view, attention to the politics of listening provides a means of moving beyond questions of speaking and voice to canvass issues of dialogue and meaningful interaction across difference and inequality.”

And the research looks at the practical importance of hyperlocal media in “familiarizing the unfamiliar”:

“[It] affects residents’ feelings about their physical neighbourhood in a positive way. In line with Poletti (2011), this ‘‘life narrative’’ storytelling contributes to the prevalence of intimacy and affect in the construction of civic engagement. The neighbourhood becomes more their ‘‘own’

“… Taking responsibility for a ‘‘readable’’ neighbourhood means that residents take pains to understand others and to make themselves understandable to others. Silverstone has called this ethos ‘‘media hospitality’’, which he considers the obligation to hear and to listen and to create a space for effective communication, ‘‘obligations which are imposed both on the media-weak as well as the media-powerful’

“… Studies of hyper-local storytelling projects, we suggest, should move beyond thinking about community as a primary good and end in itself. What residents asked from neighbourhood journalists is that their stories facilitated a comfort zone, not by copying professional mediating practices on a hyper-local level, but by directing the source of the pain: mainstream journalisms’ contribution to miscommunication and misinterpretation of one’s surroundings and one’s fellow residents, which in turn contributed to a sense of losing one’s grip on neighbourhood reality. By giving the floor to everyday stories about everyday life by ordinary people living or working in the neighbourhoods, You in the Neighbourhood enabled residents to interpret each other’s behaviour, habits or responses more correctly. Becoming better able to understand their fellow residents made them in turn more predictable while also increasing the neighbourhood’s and residents’ familiarity.”

In conclusion, the writers detail both the advantages and disadvantages of being embedded in the community you are reporting on. Firstly, in terms of quality:

“Creating trust as part of a strategy of ‘‘listening’’ by violating the ‘‘producer/audience boundary’’ seemed to work out well, in professional as well as in community terms. The residents who ended up in a broadcasted TV item were all positive about this approach and had the feeling that their reality was well conveyed. The most personal, original and valuable items were often produced by those neighbourhood journalists who took time to get acquainted with the residents they wanted to interview*reports of which the editor in chief of the regional newscaster claimed to be outright jealous: ‘‘We never managed to get into the trailer camp, let alone get an interesting interview out of a resident.’’ “

But this didn’t, she says, work for every type of story:

“Although residents confided their story much more easily to neighbourhood journalists, not every neighbourhood reality could be shared just as easily. Storytelling neighbourhood seems to be limited in its range of topics (residents as subjects, not objects), news frame (constructive and solution oriented) and tone of voice (optimistic and cheerful). Residents themselves did not always feel free to discuss the seamy side of their neighbourhood, at least not on television, fearing that others would recognize them and turn against them.

“Like other residents, some felt ill at ease to uncover stories of crime or violence, knowing they frequented the same supermarket and the same schoolyards as the ‘‘villains’’. In addition, they found it difficult to present the downside of the neighbourhoods’ reality, without losing people’s trust. It remained difficult to address issues about differences in a non-racist discourse.”

Ultimately, there is a role for both ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ reporting, but a lot to be learned by local journalists both in how their work has an effect at a local level (in some cases their presence actually provoked the violent response that they were there to report) and in the absence of local ‘problem community’ voices in regional media.

There are also some practical applications in planning a productive hyperlocal project – and anticipating the holes in coverage that it is less likely to fill.

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In a guest post for OJB, Neil Thurman highlights a new research report that suggests the increased availability of news on mobile platforms, and its harnessing of social networks—like Facebook—to power recommendations, comes at a price: stories that are less relevant to readers’ interests than those recommended by editors and found on news providers’ traditional websites.

Given the modern software platforms that mobile devices offer and their ability to be location-aware, when my co-author, Prof Steve Schifferes, and I started work on this report we were expecting news providers’ mobile editions and ‘apps’ to be highly personalizable. In fact we found they offered, on average, 13 times fewer forms of personalization than news providers’ full web editions.

We think this might be a result of the relatively early stage of development of mobile news apps but also because mobile devices—like the iPad—are often used for passive rather than active consumption. We reached the conclusion that if you like to get your news filtered to your preferences you’re better sticking to news providers’ main websites.

We also found that social filters performed poorly against editors in their choice of stories readers wanted to see. Specifically the Facebook plug-in some news sites have used hasn’t done a good job of predicting readers’ interests.

News moves so quickly that your Facebook ‘friends’ just can’t keep up, and we have fewer overlapping interests with those ‘friends’ than we think. Professional editors can still better predict the stories you’ll want to read than the social filters currently available on some news sites.

Although journalists have thus-far retained their gate keeping role, we do believe that social media is going to be increasingly crucial to the future of news. Our evidence suggests that there still is a gap in the market for effective social news filters, which research projects and commercial companies have not yet filled.

Our report surveyed eleven national news websites in the UK and US over a three and a half year period.

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In the final part of the research underpinning a new Help Me Investigate project I explore the qualities that successful crowdsourcing investigations shared. Previous parts are linked below:

• Part 1: Investigative journalism; conceptualising Help Me Investigate
• Part 2: Building the site
• Part 3: Reflections on the Proof of Concept phase
• Part 4: The London Weekly case study
• Part 5: What are the characteristics of a crowdsourced investigation?
• Part 6: What made the crowdsourcing successful?

Conclusions

Looking at the reasons that users of the site as a whole gave for not contributing to an investigation, the majority attributed this to ‘not having enough time’. Although at least one interviewee, in contrast, highlighted the simplicity and ease of contributing, it needs to be as easy and simple as possible for users to contribute (or appear to be) in order to lower the perception of effort and time needed.

Notably, the second biggest reason for not contributing was a ‘lack of personal connection with an investigation’, demonstrating the importance of the individual and social dimension of crowdsourcing. Likewise, a ‘personal interest in the issue’ was the single largest factor in someone contributing. A ‘Why should I contribute?’ feature on crowdsourcing projects may be worth considering.

Others mentioned the social dimension of crowdsourcing – the “sense of being involved in something together” – what Jenkins (2006, p244) would refer to as “consumption as a networked practice”, a motivation also identified by Yochai Benkler in his work on networks (2006). Looking at non-financial motivations behind people contributing their time to online projects, he refers to “socio-psychological reward”. He also identifies the importance of “hedonic personal gratification”. In other words, fun.

Although positive feedback formed part of the design of the site, no consideration was paid to negative feedback: users being made aware of when they were not succeeding. This element also appears to be absent from game mechanics in other crowdsourcing experiments such as The Guardian’s MPs’ expenses app.

While it is easy to talk about “Failure for free”, more could be done to identify and support failing investigations. A monthly update feature that would remind users of recent activity and – more importantly – the lack of activity might help here. The investigators in a group might be asked whether they wish to terminate the investigation in those cases, emphasising their responsibility for its progress and helping ‘clean up’ the investigations listed on the first page of the site.

However, there is also a danger in interfering too much in reducing failure. This is a natural instinct, and the establishment of a reasonable ‘success rate’ at the outset – based on the literature around crowdsourcing – helps to counter this. That was part of the design of Help Me Investigate: it was the 1-5% of questions that gained traction that would be the focus of the site. One analogy is a news conference where members throw out ideas – only a few are chosen for investment of time and energy, the rest ‘fail’.

It is the management of that tension between interfering to ensure everything succeeds (and so removing the incentive for users to be self-motivated) and not interfering at all (leaving users feeling unsupported and unmotivated) that is likely to be the key to a successful crowdsourcing project. More than a year into the project, this tension was still being negotiated.

In summing up the research into Help Me Investigate it is possible to identify five qualities which successful investigations shared: ‘Alpha users’ (highly active, who drove investigations forward); modularity (the ability to break down a large investigation into smaller discrete elements); public-ness (the ability for others to find out about an investigation); feedback (game mechanics and the pleasure of using the site); and diversity of users.

Relating these findings to other research into crowdsourcing more generally it is possible to make broader generalisations regarding how future projects might be best organised. Leadbeater (2008, p68), for example, identifies five key principles of successful collaborative projects, summed up as ‘Core’ (directly comparable to the need for alpha users identified in this research); ‘Contribute’ (large numbers, comparable to public-ness); ‘Connect’ (diversity); ‘Collaborate’ (self governance – relating indirectly to modularity); and ‘Create’ (creative pleasure – relating indirectly to feedback). Similar qualities are also identified by US investigative reporter and Knight fellow Wendy Norris in her experiments with crowdsourcing (Lavrusik, 2010).

The most notable connections here are the indirect ones. While the technology of Help Me Investigate allowed for modularity, for example, the community structure was rather flat. Leadbeater’s research (2008) and that of Lih (2009) into the development of Wikipedia and Tsui (2010, PDF) into Global Voices indicate that ‘modularity’ may be part of a wider need for ‘structure’. Conversely ‘feedback’ provides a specific, practical way for crowdsourcing projects to address users’ need for creative pleasure.

As Help Me Investigate reached its 18th month a number of changes were made to test these ideas: the code was released as open source, effectively crowdsourcing the technology itself, and a strategy was adopted to recruit niche community managers who could build expertise in particular fields, along with an advisory board that was similarly diverse. The Help Me Investigate design was replicated in a plugin which would allow anyone running a self-hosted WordPress blog to manage their own version of the site.

This separation of technology from community was a key learning outcome of the project. While the site had solved some of the technical challenges of crowdsourcing and identified the qualities of successful crowdsourced investigation, it was clear that the biggest challenge lay in connecting the increasingly networked communities that wanted to investigate public interest issues – and in a way that was both sustainable and scalable beyond the level of individual investigations.

References

1. Arthur, Charles. Forecasting is a notoriously imprecise science – ask any meteorologist, January 29 2010, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/29/apple-ipad-crowdsource accessed 14/3/2011
2. Beckett, Charlie (2008) SuperMedia, Oxford: Blackwell
3. Belam, Martin. Whatever Paul Waugh thinks, The Guardian’s MPs Expenses crowd-sourcing experiment was no “total failure”, Currybetdotnet, March 10 2010 http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2010/03/whatever-paul-waugh-thinks-the.php accessed 14/3/2011
4. Belam, Martin. Abort? Retry? Fail? – Judging the success of the Guardian’s MP’s expenses app, Currybetdotnet, March 7 2011, http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2011/03/guardian-mps-expenses-success.php accessed 14/3/2011
5. Belam, Martin. The Guardian’s Paul Lewis on crowd-sourcing investigative journalism with Twitter, Currybetdotnet, March 10 2011, http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2011/03/paul-lewis-investigative-journalism-twitter.php accessed 14/3/2011
6. Benkler, Yochai (2006) The Wealth of Networks, New Haven: Yale University Press
7. Bonomolo, Alessandra. Repubblica.it’s experiment with “Investigative reporting on demand”, Online Journalism Blog, March 21 2011, http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2011/03/21/repubblica-its-experiment-with-investigative-reporting-on-demand/ accessed 23/3/2011
8. Bradshaw, Paul. Wiki Journalism: Are wikis the new blogs? Paper presented to The Future of Journalism conference, Cardiff University, September 2007, http://onlinejournalismblog.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/wiki_journalism.pdf
9. Bradshaw, Paul. The Guardian’s tool to crowdsource MPs’ expenses data: time to play, Online Journalism Blog, June 19 2009 http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2009/06/19/the-guardian-build-a-platform-to-crowdsource-mps-expenses-data/ accessed 14/3/2011
10. Brogan, C., & Smith, J. (2009). Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve
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12. Bruns, Axel (2005) Gatewatching, New York: Peter Lang
13. Bruns, Axel (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond, New York: Peter Lang
14. De Burgh, Hugo (2008) Investigative Journalism, London: Routledge
15. Dondlinger, Mary Jo. Educational Video Game Design: A Review of the Literature, Journal of Applied Educational Technology Volume 4, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2007, http://www.eduquery.com/jaet/JAET4-1_Dondlinger.pdf
16. Ellis, Justin. A perpetual motion machine for investigative reporting: CPI and PRI partner on state corruption project, Nieman Journalism Lab, March 8 2011 http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/03/a-perpetual-motion-machine-for-investigative-reporting-cpi-and-pri-partner-on-state-corruption-project/ accessed 21/3/2011
17. Graham, John. Feedback in Game Design, Wolfire Blog, April 21 2010 http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/04/Feedback-In-Game-Design accessed 14/3/2011
18. Grey, Stephen (2006) Ghost Plane, London: C Hurst & Co
19. Hickman, Jon. Help Me Investigate: the social practices of investigative journalism, Paper presented to the Media Production Analysis Working Group, IAMCR, Braga, 2010, http://theplan.co.uk/help-me-investigate-the-social-practices-of-i
20. Howe, Jeff. Gannett to Crowdsource News, Wired, November 3 2006, http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2006/11/72067 accessed 14/3/2011
21. Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture, New York: New York University Press
22. Lavrusik, Vadim. How Investigative Journalism Is Prospering in the Age of Social Media, Mashable, November 24 2010, http://mashable.com/2010/11/24/investigative-journalism-social-web/ accessed 14/3/2011
23. Leadbeater (2008) We-Think, London: Profile Books
24. Leigh, David. Help us solve the mystery of Blair’s money, The Guardian, December 1 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/01/help-us-solve-blair-mystery accessed 14/3/2011
25. Lih, Andrew (2009) The Wikipedia Revolution, London: Aurum Press
26. Marshall, Sarah. Snow map developer creates ‘Cutsmap’ for Channel 4′s budget coverage, Journalism.co.uk, 22 March 2011, http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/snow-map-developer-creates-cutsmap-for-channel-4-s-budget-coverage/s2/a543335/ accessed 22/3/2011
27. Morozov, Evgeny (2011) The Net Delusion, London: Allen Lane
28. Nielsen, Jakob. Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, October 9, 2006, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html accessed 14/3/2011
29. Paterson and Domingo (2008) Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production, New York: Peter Lang
30. Porter, Joshua (2008) Designing for the Social Web, Berkeley: New Riders
31. Raymond, Eric S. (1999) The Cathedral and the Bazaar, New York: O’Reilly
32. Scotney, Tom. Help Me Investigate: How working collaboratively can benefit journalists, Journalism.co.uk, August 14 2009, http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-features/help-me-investigate-how-working-collaboratively-can-benefit-journalists/s5/a535469/ accessed 21/3/2011
33. Shirky, Clay (2008) Here Comes Everybody, London: Allen Lane
34. Snyder, Chris. Spot.Us Launches Crowd-Funded Journalism Project, Wired, November 10, 2008, http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/11/spotus-launches/ accessed 21/3/2011
35. Surowiecki, James (2005) The Wisdom of Crowds, London: Abacus
36. Tapscott, Don & Williams, Anthony (2006) Wikinomics, London: Atlantic Books
37. Tsui, Lokman. A Journalism of Hospitality, unpublished thesis, Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania, 2010 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22048/Tsui-Dissertation-Deposit-Final.pdf accessed 14/3/2011
38. Weinberger, David (2002) Small Pieces, Loosely Joined, New York: Basic Books

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In the penultimate part of the serialisation of research underpinning a new Help Me Investigate project I explore the qualities that successful crowdsourcing investigations shared. Previous parts are linked below:

• Part 1: Investigative journalism; conceptualising Help Me Investigate
• Part 2: Building the site
• Part 3: Reflections on the Proof of Concept phase
• Part 4: The London Weekly case study
• Part 5: What are the characteristics of a crowdsourced investigation?

What made the crowdsourcing successful?

Clearly, a distinction should be made between what made the investigation successful as a series of outcomes, and what made crowdsourcing successful as a method for investigative reporting. This section concerns itself with the latter.

What made the community gather, and continue to return? One hypothesis was that the nature of the investigation provided a natural cue to interested parties – The London Weekly was published on Fridays and Saturdays and there was a build up of expectation to see if a new issue would indeed appear.

The data, however, did not support this hypothesis. There was indeed a rhythm but it did not correlate to the date of publication. Wednesdays were the most popular day for people contributing to the investigation.

Upon further investigation a possible explanation was found: one of the investigation’s ‘alpha’ contributors – James Ball – had set himself a task to blog about the investigation every week. His blog posts appeared on a Wednesday.

That this turned out to be a significant factor in driving activity suggests one important lesson: talking publicly and regularly about the investigation’s progress is key to its activity and success.

This data was backed up from the interviews. One respondent mentioned the “weekly cue” explicitly. And Jon Hickman’s research also identified that investigation activity related to “events and interventions. Leadership, especially by staffers, and tasking appeared to be the main drivers of activity within the investigation.” (2010, p10)

He breaks down activity on the site into three ‘acts’, although their relationship to the success of the investigation is not explored further:

• ‘Brainstorm’ (an initial flurry of activity, much of which is focused on scoping the investigation and recruiting)
• ‘Consolidation’ (activity is driven by new information)
• ‘Long tail’ (intermittent caretaker activity, such as supportive comments or occasional updates)

Networked utility

Hickman describes the site as a “centralised sub-network that suits a specific activity” (2010, p12). Importantly, this sub-network forms part of a larger ‘network of networks’ which involves spaces such as users’ blogs, Twitter, Facebook, email and other platforms and channels.

“And yet Help Me Investigate still provided a useful space for them to work within; investigators and staffers feel that the website facilitates investigation in a way that their other social media tools could not:

““It adds the structure and the knowledge base; the challenges, integration with ‘what do they know’ ability to pose questions allows groups to structure an investigation logically and facilitates collaboration.” (Interview with investigator)” (Hickman, 2010, p12)

In the London Weekly investigation the site also helped keep track of a number of discussions taking place around the web. Having been born from a discussion on Twitter, further conversations on Twitter resulted in further people signing up, along with comments threads and other online discussion. This fit the way the site was designed culturally – to be part of a network rather than asking people to do everything on-site.

The presence of ‘alpha’ users like James and Judith was crucial in driving activity on the site – a pattern observed in other successful investigations. They picked up the threads contributed by others and not only wove them together into a coherent narrative that allowed others to enter more easily, but also set the new challenges that provided ways for people to contribute. The fact that they brought with them a strong social network presence is probably also a factor – but one that needs further research.

The site had been designed to emphasise the role of the user in driving investigations. The agenda is not owned by a central publisher, but by the person posing the question – and therefore the responsibility is theirs as well. This cultural hurdle – towards acknowledging personal power and responsibility – may be the biggest one that the site has to address, and the offer of “failure for free” (Shirky, 2008), allowing users to learn what works and what doesn’t, may support that.

The fact that crowdsourcing worked well for the investigation is worth noting, as it could be broken down into separate parts and paths – most of which could be completed online: “Where does this claim come from?” “Can you find out about this person?” “What can you discover about this company?”. One person, for example, used Google Streetview to establish that the registered address of the company was a postbox. Other investigations that are less easily broken down may be less suitable for crowdsourcing – or require more effort to ensure success.

Momentum and direction

A regular supply of updates provided the investigation with momentum. The accumulation of discoveries provided valuable feedback to users, who then returned for more. In his book on Wikipedia, Andrew Lih (2009 p82) notes a similar pattern – ‘stigmergy’ – that is observed in the natural world: “The situation in which the product of previous work, rather than direct communication [induces and directs] additional labour”. An investigation without these ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ (Weinberger, 2002) might not suit crowdsourcing so well.

Hickman’s interviews with participants in the Birmingham council website investigation found a feeling of the investigation being communally owned and led:

“Certain members were good at driving the investigation forward, helping decide on what to do next, but it did not feel like anyone was in charge as such.”

“I’d say HMI had pivital role in keeping us together and focused but it felt owned by everyone.” (Hickman 2010, p10)

One problem, however, was that the number of diverging paths led to a range of potential avenues of enquiry. In the end, although the core questions were answered (was the publication a hoax and what were the bases for their claims) the investigation raised many more questions. These remained largely unanswered once the majority of users felt that their questions had been answered. As in a traditional investigation, there came a point at which those involved had to make a judgement whether they wished to invest any more time in it.

Finally, the investigation benefited from a diverse group of contributors who contributed specialist knowledge or access. Some physically visited stations where the newspaper was claiming distribution to see how many copies were being handed out. Others used advanced search techniques to track down details on the people involved and the claims being made, or to make contact with people who had had previous experiences with those behind the newspaper. The visibility of the investigation online also led to more than one ‘whistleblower’ approach providing inside information, which was not published on the site but resulted in new challenges being set.

The final part of this series will outline some conclusions to be taken from the project, and where it plans to go next.

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Continuing the serialisation of the research underpinning a new Help Me Investigate project, in this fourth part I describe how one particular investigation took shape. Previous parts are linked below:

• Part 1: Investigative journalism; conceptualising Help Me Investigate
• Part 2: Building the site
• Part 3: Reflections on the Proof of Concept phase

Case study: the London Weekly investigation

In early 2010 Andy Brightwell and I conducted some research into one particular successful investigation on the site. The objective was to identify what had made the investigation successful – and how (or if) those conditions might be replicated for other investigations both on the site and elsewhere online.

The investigation chosen for the case study was ‘What do you know about The London Weekly?’ – an investigation into a free newspaper that was, the owners claimed (part of the investigation was to establish if the claim was a hoax), about to launch in London.

The people behind The London Weekly had made a number of claims about planned circulation, staffing and investment which went unchallenged in specialist media. Journalists Martin Stabe, James Ball and Judith Townend, however, wanted to dig deeper. So, after an exchange on Twitter, Judith logged onto Help Me Investigate and started an investigation.

A month later members of the investigation (most of whom were non-journalists) had unearthed a wealth of detail about the people behind The London Weekly and the facts behind their claims. Some of the information was reported in MediaWeek and The Guardian podcast Media Talk; some formed the basis for posts on James Ball’s blog, Journalism.co.uk and the Online Journalism Blog. Some has, for legal reasons, remained unpublished.

Methodology

Andrew Brightwell conducted a number of semi-structured interviews with contributors to the investigation. The sample was randomly selected but representative of the mix of contributors, who were categorised as either ‘alpha’ contributors (over 6 contributions), ‘active’ (2-6 contributions) and ‘lurkers’ (whose only contribution was to join the investigation). These interviews formed the qualitative basis for the research.

Complementing this data was quantitative information about users of the site as a whole. This was taken from two user surveys – one conducted when the site was three months’ old and another at 12 months – and analysis of analytics taken from the investigation (such as numbers and types of actions, frequency, etc.)

In the next part I explore some of the characteristics of a crowdsourced investigation and how these relate to the wider literature around crowdsourcing in general.

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Continuing the serialisation of the research underpinning a new Help Me Investigate project, in this third part I describe how the focus of the site was shaped by the interests of its users and staff, and how site functionality was changed to react to user needs. I also identify some areas where the site could have been further developed and improved. (Part 1 is available here; Part 2 is here)

Reflections on the proof of concept phase

By the end of the 12 week proof of concept phase the site had also completed a number of investigations that were not ‘headline-makers’ but fulfilled the objective of informing users: in particular ‘Why is a new bus company allowed on an existing route with same number, but higher prices?’; ‘What is the tracking process for petitions handed in to Birmingham City Council?’ and ‘The DVLA and misrepresented number plates’

The site had also unearthed some promising information that could provide the basis for more stories, such as Birmingham City Council receiving over £160,000 in payments for vehicle removals; and ‘Which councils in the UK (that use Civil Enforcement) make the most from parking tickets?’ (as a byproduct, this also unearthed how well different councils responded to Freedom of Information requests#)

A number of news organisations expressed an interest in working with the site, but practical contributions to the site took place largely at an individual rather than organisational level. Journalist Tom Scotney, who was involved in one of the investigations, commented: “Get it right and you’re becoming part of an investigative team that’s bigger, more diverse and more skilled than any newsroom could ever be” (Scotney, 2009, n.p.) – but it was becoming clear that most journalists were not culturally prepared – or had the time – to engage with the site unless there was a story ‘ready made’ for them to use. Once there were stories to be had, however, they contributed a valuable role in writing those stories up, obtaining official reactions, and spreading visibility.

After 12 weeks the site had around 275 users (whose backgrounds ranged from journalism and web development to locally active citizens) and 71 investigations, exceeding project targets. It is difficult to measure ‘success’ or ‘failure’ but at least eight investigations had resulted in coherent stories, representing a success rate of at least 11%: the target figure before launch had been 1-5%. That figure rose to around 21% if other promising investigations were included, and the sample included recently initiated investigations which were yet to get off the ground.

‘Success’ was an interesting metric which deserves further elaboration. In his reflection on The Guardian’s crowdsourcing experiment, for example, developer Martin Belam (2011a, n.p.) noted a tendency to evaluate success “not purely editorially, but with a technology mindset in terms of the ‘100% – Achievement unlocked!’ games mechanic.”. In other words, success might be measured in terms of degrees of ‘completion’ rather than results.

In contrast, the newspaper’s journalist Paul Lewis saw success in terms of something other than pure percentages: getting 27,000 people to look at expense claims was, he felt, a successful outcome, regardless of the percentage of claims that those represented. And BBC Special Reports Editor Bella Hurrell – who oversaw a similar but less ambitious crowdsourcing project on the same subject on the broadcaster’s website, felt that they had also succeeded in genuine ‘public service journalism’ in the process (personal interview).

A third measure of success is noted by Belam – that of implementation and iteration (being able to improve the service based on how it is used):

“It demonstrated that as a team our tech guys could, in the space of around a week, get an application deployed into the cloud but appear integrated into our site, using a technology stack that was not our regular infrastructure.

“Secondly, it showed that as a business we could bring people together from editorial, design, technology and QA to deliver a rapid turnaround project in a multi-disciplinary way, based on a topical news story.

“And thirdly, we learned from and improved upon it.“ (Belam, 2010, n.p.)

A percentage ‘success’ rate of Help Me Investigate, then, represents a similar, ‘game-oriented’ perspective on the site, and it is important to draw on other frameworks to measure its success.

For example, it was clear that the site did very well in producing raw material for ‘journalism’, but it was less successful in generating more general civic information such as how to find out who owned a piece of land. Returning to the ideas of Actor-Network Theory outlined above, the behaviour of two principal actors – and one investigation – had a particular influence on this, and how the site more generally developed over time. Site user Neil Houston was an early adopter of the site and one of its heaviest contributors. His interest in interrogating data helped shape the path of many of the site’s most active investigations, which in turn set the editorial ‘tone’ of the site. This attracted users with similar interests to Neil, but may have discouraged others who did not – further research would be needed to establish this.

Likewise, while Birmingham City Council staff contributed to the site in its earliest days, when the council became the subject of an investigation staff’s involvement was actively discouraged (personal interview with contributor). This left the site short of particular expertise in answering civic questions.

At least one user commented that the site was very ‘FOI [Freedom Of Information request]-heavy’ and risked excluding users interested in different types of investigations, or who saw Freedom of Information requests as too difficult for them. This could be traced directly to the appointment of Heather Brooke as the site’s support journalist. Heather is a leading Freedom of Information activist and user of FOI requests: this was an enormous strength in supporting relevant investigations but it should also be recognised how that served to set the editorial tone of the site.

This narrowing of tone was addressed by bringing in a second support journalist with a consumer background: Colin Meek. There was also a strategic shift in community management which involved actively involving users with other investigations. As more users came onto the site these broadened into consumer, property and legal areas.

However, a further ‘actor’ then came into play: the legal and insurance systems. Due to the end of proof of concept funding and the associated legal insurance the team had to close investigations unrelated to the public sector as they left the site most vulnerable legally.

A final example of Actor-Network Theory in action was a difference between the intentions of the site designers and its users. The founders wanted Help Me Investigate to be a place for consensus, not discussion, but it was quickly apparent users did not want to have to go elsewhere to have their discussions. Users needed to – and did – have conversations around the updates that they posted.

The initial challenge-and-result model (breaking investigations down into challenges with entry fields for the subsequent results, which were required to include a link to the source of their information) was therefore changed very early on to challenge-and-update: people could now update without a link, simply to make a point about a previous result, or to explain their efforts in failing to obtain a result.

One of the challenges least likely to be accepted by users was to ‘Write the story up’. It seemed that those who knew the investigation had no need to write it up: the story existed in their heads. Instead it was either site staff or professional journalists who would normally write up the results. Similarly, when an investigation was complete, it required site staff to update the investigation description to include a link to any write-up. There was no evidence of a desire from users to ‘be a journalist’. Indeed, the overriding objective appeared rather to ‘be a citizen’.

In contrast, a challenge to write ‘the story so far’ seemed more appealing in investigations that had gathered data but no resolution as yet. The site founders underestimated the need for narrative in designing a site that allowed users to join investigations while they were in progress.

As was to be expected with a ‘proof of concept’ site (one testing whether an idea could work), there were a number of areas of frustration in the limitations of the site – and identification of areas of opportunity. When looking to crowdfund small amounts for an investigation, for example, there were no third party tools available that would allow this without going through a nonprofit organisation. And when an investigation involved a large crowdsourcing operation the connection to activity conducted on other platforms needed to be stronger so users could more easily see what needed doing (e.g. a live feed of changes to a Google spreadsheet, or documents bookmarked using Delicious).

Finally investigations often evolved into new questions but had to stay with an old title or risk losing the team and resources that had been built up. The option to ‘export’ an investigation team and resources into a fresh question/investigation was one possible future solution.

‘Failure for free’ was part of the design of the site in order to allow investigations to succeed on the efforts of its members rather than as a result of any top-down editorial agenda – although naturally journalist users would concentrate their efforts on the most newsworthy investigations. In practice it was hard to ‘let failure happen’, especially when almost all investigations had some public interest value.

Although the failure itself was not an issue (and indeed the failure rate lower than expected), a ‘safety net’ was needed that would more proactively suggest ways investigators could make their investigation a success, including features such as investigation ‘mentors’ who could pass on their experience; ‘expiry dates’ on challenges with reminders; improved ability to find other investigators with relevant skills or experience; a ‘sandbox’ investigation for new users to find their feet; and developing a metric to identify successful and failing investigations.

Communication was central to successful investigations and two areas required more attention: staff time in pursuing communication with users; and technical infrastructure to automate and facilitate communication (such as alerts to new updates or the ability to mail all investigation members)

The much-feared legal issues threatened by the site did not particularly materialise. Out of over 70 investigations in the first 12 weeks, only four needed rephrasing to avoid being potentially libellous. Two involved minor tweaks; the other two were more significant, partly because of a related need for clarity in the question.

Individual updates within investigations, which were post-moderated, presented even less of a legal problem. Only two updates were referred for legal advice, and only one of those rephrased. One was flagged and removed because it was ‘flamey’ and did not contribute to the investigation.

There was a lack of involvement by users across investigations. Users tended to stick to their own investigation and the idea of ‘helping another so they help you’ did not take root. Further research is needed to see if there was a power law distribution at work here – often seen on the internet – of a few people being involved in lots of investigations, most being involved in one, and a steep upward curve between.

In the next part, published tomorrow, I look at one particular investigation in an attempt to identify the qualities that made it successful. 

If you want to get involved in the latest Help Me Investigate project, get in touch on paul@helpmeinvestigate.com

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A research paper I’ve contributed to, with Jean-Christophe Pascal and Neil Thurman, on a regional publisher’s experiment with hyperlocal publishing, has now been published on City University’s website. You can download the full PDF from here.

Hold The Front Page (which is part-owned by Northcliffe, the subject of the research), reported on the research here, which includes a response from Northcliffe.

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Earlier this year I and Andy Brightwell conducted some research into one of the successful investigations on my crowdsourcing platform Help Me Investigate. I wanted to know what had made the investigation successful – and how (or if) we might replicate those conditions for other investigations.

I presented the findings (presentation embedded above) at the Journalism’s Next Top Model conference in June. This post sums up those findings.

The investigation in question was ‘What do you know about The London Weekly?‘ – an investigation into a free newspaper that was (they claimed – part of the investigation was to establish if this was a hoax) about to launch in London.

The people behind the paper had made a number of claims about planned circulation, staffing and investment that most of the media reported uncritically. Martin Stabe, James Ball and Judith Townend, however, wanted to dig deeper. So, after an exchange on Twitter, Judith logged onto Help Me Investigate and started an investigation.

A month later members of the investigation had unearthed a wealth of detail about the people behind The London Weekly and the facts behind their claims. Some of the information was reported in MediaWeek and The Media Guardian podcast Media Talk; some formed the basis for posts on James Ball’s blog, Journalism.co.uk and the Online Journalism Blog. Some has, for legal reasons, remained unpublished.

A note on methodology

Andrew conducted a number of semi-structured interviews with contributors to the investigation. The sample was randomly selected but representative of the mix of contributors, who were categorised as either ‘alpha’ contributors (over 6 contributions), ‘active’ (2-6 contributions) and ‘lurkers’ (whose only contribution was to join the investigation). These interviews formed the qualitative basis for the research.

Complementing this data was quantitative information about users of the site as a whole. This was taken from two user surveys – one when the site was 3 months’ old and another at 12 months – and analysis of analytics taken from the investigation (such as numbers and types of actions, frequency, etc.)

What are the characteristics of a crowdsourced investigation?

One of the first things I wanted to analyse was whether the investigation data matched up to patterns observed elsewhere in crowdsourcing and online activity. An analysis of the number of actions by each user, for example, showed a clear ‘power law’ distribution, where a minority of users accounted for the majority of activity.

This power law, however, did not translate into a breakdown approaching the 90-9-1 ‘law of participation inequality‘ observed by Jakob Nielsen. Instead, the balance between those who made a couple of contributions (normally the 9% of the 90-9-1 split) and those who made none (the 90%) was roughly equal. This may have been because the design of the site meant it was not possible to ‘lurk’ without being a member of the site already, or being invited and signing up.

Adding in data on those looking at the investigation page who were not members may have shed further light on this.

What made the crowdsourcing successful?

Clearly, it is worth making a distinction between what made the investigation successful as a series of outcomes, and what made crowdsourcing successful as a method.

What made the community gather, and continue to return? One hypothesis was that the nature of the investigation provided a natural cue to interested parties – The London Weekly was published on Fridays and Saturdays and there was a build up of expectation to see if a new issue would indeed appear.

I was curious to see if the investigation had any ‘rhythm’. Would there be peaks of interest correlating to the expected publication?

The data threw up something else entirely. There was indeed a rhythm but it was Wednesdays that were the most popular day for people contributing to the investigation.

Why? Well, it turned out that one of the investigation’s ‘alpha’ contributors – James Ball – set himself a task to blog about the investigation every week. His blog posts appeared on a Wednesday.

That this turned out to be a significant factor in driving activity tells us one important lesson: talking publicly and regularly about the investigation’s progress is key.

This data was backed up from the interviews. One respondent mentioned the “weekly cue” explicitly.

More broadly, it seems that the site helped keep track of a number of discussions taking place around the web. Having been born from a discussion on Twitter, further conversations on Twitter resulted in further people signing up, along with comments threads and other online discussion. This fit the way the site was designed culturally – to be part of a network rather than asking people to do everything on-site.

But the planned technical connectivity of the site with the rest of the web (being able to pull related tweets or bookmarks, for example) had been dropped during development as we focused on core functionality. This was not a bad thing, I should emphasise, as it prevented us becoming distracted with ‘bells and whistles’ and allowed us to iterate in reaction to user activity rather than our own assumptions of what users would want. This research shows that user activity and informs future development accordingly.

The presence of ‘alpha’ users like James and Judith was crucial in driving activity on the site – a pattern observed in other successful investigations. They picked up the threads contributed by others and not only wove them together into a coherent narrative that allowed others to enter more easily, but also set the new challenges that provided ways for people to contribute. The fact that they brought with them a strong social network presence is probably also a factor – but one that needs further research.

The site has always been designed to emphasise the role of the user in driving investigations. The agenda is not owned by a central publisher, but by the person posing the question – and therefore the responsibility is theirs as well. In this sense it draws on Jenkins’ argument that “Consumers will be more powerful within convergence culture – but only if they recognise and use that power.” This cultural hurdle may be the biggest one that the site has to address.

Indeed, the site is also designed to offer “Failure for free”, allowing users to learn what works and what doesn’t, and begin to take on that responsibility where required.

The investigation also suited crowdsourcing well, as it could be broken down into separate parts and paths – most of which could be completed online: “Where does this claim come from?” “Can you find out about this person?” “What can you discover about this company?”. One person, for example, used Google Streetview to establish that the registered address of the company was a postbox.

Other investigations that are less easily broken down may be less suitable for crowdsourcing – or require more effort to ensure success.

A regular supply of updates provided the investigation with momentum. The accumulation of discoveries provided valuable feedback to users, who then returned for more. In his book on Wikipedia, Andrew Lih (2009 p82) notes a similar pattern – ‘stigmergy‘ – that is observed in the natural world: “The situation in which the product of previous work, rather than direct communication [induces and directs] additional labour”. An investigation without these ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ might not suit crowdsourcing so well.

One problem, however, was that those paths led to a range of potential avenues of enquiry. In the end, although the core questions were answered (was the publication a hoax and what were the bases for their claims) the investigation raised many more questions.

These remained largely unanswered once the majority of users felt that their questions had been answered. Like any investigation, there came a point at which those involved had to make a judgement whether they wished to invest any more time in it.

Finally, the investigation benefited from a diverse group of contributors who contributed specialist knowledge or access. Some physically visited stations where the newspaper was claiming distribution to see how many copies were being handed out. Others used advanced search techniques to track down details on the people involved and the claims being made, or to make contact with people who had had previous experiences with those behind the newspaper.

The visibility of the investigation online led to more than one ‘whistleblower’ approach providing inside information.

What can be done to make it better?

Looking at the reasons that users of the site as a whole gave for not contributing to an investigation, the majority attributed this to ‘not having enough time’. Although at least one interviewee, in contrast, highlighted the simplicity and ease of contributing, it needs to be as easy and simple as possible for users to contribute in order to lower the perception of effort and time needed.

Notably, the second biggest reason for not contributing was a ‘lack of personal connection with an investigation’, demonstrating the importance of the individual and social dimension of crowdsourcing. Likewise, a ‘personal interest in the issue’ was the single largest factor in someone contributing. A ‘Why should I contribute?’ feature on each investigation may be worth considering.

Others mentioned the social dimension of crowdsourcing – the “sense of being involved in something together” – what Jenkins (2006) would refer to as “consumption as a networked practice”.

This motivation is also identified by Yochai Benkler in his work on networks. Looking at non-financial reasons why people contribute their time to online projects, he refers to “socio-psychological reward”. He also identifies the importance of “hedonic personal gratification”. In other words, fun. (Interestingly, these match two of the three traditional reasons for consuming news: because it is socially valuable, and because it is entertaining. The third – because it is financially valuable – neatly matches the third reason for working).

While it is easy to talk about “Failure for free”, more could be done to identify and support failing investigations. We are currently developing a monthly update feature that would remind users of recent activity and – more importantly – the lack of activity. The investigators in a group might be asked whether they wish to terminate the investigation in those cases, emphasising their role in its progress and helping ‘clean up’ the investigations listed on the first page of the site.

That said, there is also a danger is interfering too much in reducing failure. This is a natural instinct, and I have to continually remind myself that I started the project with an expectation of 95-99% of investigations ‘failing’ through a lack of motivation on the part of the instigator. That was part of the design. It was the 1-5% of questions that gained traction that would be the focus of the site (this is how Meetup works, for example – most groups ‘fail’ but there is no way to predict which ones. As it happens, the ‘success’ rate of investigations has been much higher than expected). One analogy is a news conference where members throw out ideas – only a few are chosen for investment of time and energy, the rest ‘fail’.

In the end, it is the management of that tension between interfering to ensure everything succeeds – and so removing the incentive for users to be self-motivated – and not interfering at all – leaving users feeling unsupported and unmotivated – that is likely to be the key to a successful crowdsourcing project. More than a year into the project, this is still a skill that I am learning.

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Global news provider Small World News Service and online research company OnePoll are looking to undertake a large study which will research how the public access and use news online.

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