16.1. Crowd Work Definition#

When tasks are done through large groups of people making relatively small contributions, this is called crowd work. The people making the contributions generally come from a crowd of people that aren’t necessarily tied to the task (e.g., all internet users can edit Wikipedia), but then people from the crowd either get chosen to participate, or volunteer themselves.

When a task or project is given to a crowd to work on, it is called crowdsourcing (e.g., Wikipedia building an encyclopedia of knowledge). When a crowd is providing financial contributions, that is called crowdfunding (e.g., patreon, kickstarter, gofundme).

Humans have always collaborated on tasks, and crowds have been enlisted in performing tasks long before the internet existed. What social media (and other internet systems) have done is expand the options for how people can collaborate on tasks.

16.1.1. Different Ways of Collaborating and Communicating#

There have been many efforts to make computer replicate the experience of communicating with someone in person, through things like video chats, or even telepresence robots]. But there are ways that attempts to recreate in-person interactions inevitably fall short and don’t feel the same. Instead though, we can look at different characteristics that computer systems can provide, and find places where computer-based communication works better, and is Beyond Being There (pdf here).

Some of the different characteristics that means of communication can have include (but are not limited to):

  • Location: Some forms of communication require you to be physically close, some allow you to be located anywhere with an internet signal.

  • Time delay: Some forms of communication are almost instantaneous, some have small delays (you might see this on a video chat system), or have significant delays (like shipping a package).

  • Synchronicity: Some forms of communication require both participants to communicate at the same time (e.g., video chat), while others allow the person to respond when convenient (like a mailed physical letter).

  • Archiving: Some forms of communication automatically produce an archive of the communication (like a chat message history), while others do not (like an in-person conversation)

  • Anonymity: Some forms of communication make anonymity nearly impossible (like an in-person conversation), while others make it easy to remain anonymous.

Because of these (and other) differences, different forms of communication might be preferrable for different tasks. For example, you might send an email to the person sitting next at work to you if you want to keep an archive of the communication (which is also conveniently grouped into email threads). Or you might send a text message to the person sitting next to you if you are criticizing the teacher, but want to do so discretely, so the teacher doesn’t notice.

These different forms of communication can then support different methods of crowd work.