community

A bit about Demotix...

• Background is politics and freelancing
• Desire to create not just a socially-responsible business, but a "actively good" one
• Basic idea was to create a safe platform for anyone wanting to upload stories not being covered.
• "Free speech as soft power" -- led to democratization of regions such as the Middle East.
• "Mainstream media has been shedding jobs like a 70 year old man sheds hair."
  • Both foreign correspondents and local reporters are being cut.
  • Only 4 US newspapers even have a foreign desk.

• Community management becoming more and more important
  • Makes sites:
    • sticky and engaged
  • Makes information collection:
    • distributed
  • Community content becomes:
    • editorially valuable
  • Things that impacted helpmeinvestigate:
    • The 1% of content creators have a very real effect on crowdsourcing
    • Modularity is important -- being able to break down tasks
    • Two types of crowdsourcing:
      • MechanicalTurk version
        • Guardian MPs expenses crowdsourcing project