Crowdsourcing

Ever since the term "crowdsourcing" was coined in 2006 byWired writer Jeff Howe, group activities ranging from the creation of the OxfordEnglish Dictionary to the choosing of new colors for M&Ms have been labeled with this mostbuzz-generating of media buzzwords. In this accessible but authoritative account, grounded in theempirical literature, Daren Brabham explains what crowdsourcing is, what it is not, and how itworks. Crowdsourcing, Brabham tells us, is an online, distributed problem solving and productionmodel that leverages the collective intelligence of online communities for specific purposes setforth by a crowdsourcing organization -- corporate, government, or volunteer. Uniquely, it combinesa bottom-up, open, creative process with top-down organizational goals. Crowdsourcing is not opensource production, which lacks the top-down component; it is not a market research survey thatoffers participants a short list of choices; and it is qualitatively different from predigital openinnovation and collaborative production processes, which lacked the speed, reach, rich capability,and lowered barriers to entry enabled by the Internet. Brabham describes the intellectual roots ofthe idea of crowdsourcing in such concepts as collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds, anddistributed computing. He surveys the major issues in crowdsourcing, including crowd motivation, themisconception of the amateur participant, crowdfunding, and the danger of"crowdsploitation" of volunteer labor, citing real-world examples from Threadless,InnoCentive, and other organizations. And he considers the future of crowdsourcing in both theoryand practice, describing its possible roles in journalism, governance, national security, andscience and health.

Daren C. Brabham is Assistant Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.