Zombie Journalism

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: crowdmap

Recommended reading: Investigative social media, new ideas and tools

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On November 24, 2010

In Recommended Links, Social Media, TBD

Sorry it’s been so long, but it’s been crazy busy as TBD’s preparing for the holidays and other events. This’ll be a quick one, just a few links I’ve been reading of late. Have a happy Thanksgiving, folks.

Social media roundup

  • How Investigative Journalism Is Prospering in the Age of Social Media – Great ideas from several resources gathered by Vadim Lavrusik at Mashable on how to use social media in investigative reporting and newsroom projects. Includes tips on Crowdmap, Storify, Twitter crowdsourcing, data searches and more. A great post to pass on to the social media haters in your newsroom.
  • RockMelt: The User Manual– If you don’t know about Rockmelt or want to know more on how to use the new social browser, here’s a great guide from the NY Times.
  • 6 innovative uses of Tumblr by newsrooms – The big media companies are only now getting into Tumblr, but there’s a lot of possibilities out there for it.
  • Engaging Facebook fans with clever, conversational updates – Great ideas from Web Up the Newsroom for writing interesting status updates on a media outlet’s Facebook page to drive traffic to content and drive discussion online.
  • In this disturbing bit from FishbowlDC, a Washington Post editor says “crediting the original source of a scoop isn’t “a requirement or even important” because “all news originates from somewhere” and “unless one is taking someone else’s work without attribution (that is, plagiarizing it) any news story should stand on its own and speaks for itself as an original piece of work.” Hm.
  • How News Organizations Are Generating Revenue From Social Media – Another great Mashable rundown of the top ways online media is generating revenue using social media and more to hit new audiences.

On the TBD Front

How TBD’s election day experiments turned out

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On November 4, 2010

In TBD, Work Stuff & Projects

As promised, I’m reporting back on TBD’s election day experiments.

The Voting Issues Crowdmap seemed to be successful. We had a lot fewer reports than in the primaries, but considering D.C. turnout was lower and there were fewer issues reported overall, I’d say that’s accurate. We got 20 accepted reports in and some were very intriguing. Take this one:

My husband & I were told that we could not vote unless we left the children (11 month old & 3 year old) in the hallway. Then the security guard…told us we could take the 11 month old, but had to leave my 3 year old unattended in the lobby & if we didn’t want to do that, then we were unable to vote!

The Foursquare experiment was interesting, though it didn’t yield overwhelming participation. This was kind of expected, considering we didn’t have a lot of lead time and, it turns out, the venues were not easily found on the Foursquare mobile app. Next time, we’ll have to try enlisting Foursquare’s help instead of going out on our own. Here’s how it went down:

At the Virginia venue, 21 people checked in after voting and two left tips about their votes. D.C. had 66 people check in, Maryland had 51 check-ins and six tips about who they voted for in the governor’s race. Those who checked in at both the Maryland and D.C. election venues ended up earning a Swarm badge (if they didn’t have one already). All who checked in and said they were voting got Foursquare’s custom “I Voted” badge. If you missed it, Foursquare also set up a special site to track these voter check-ins as a measure of turnout.

Using Foursquare and Crowdmap to track local elections

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On November 1, 2010

In Location Apps, My Work, TBD

With the midterm elections coming tomorrow, lots of news outlets will likely be launching their fanciest new toys and social media ideas to best pull in that coveted election night audience on the web. TBD’s no exception, though our election day experiments are based in off-site crowdsourcing to better inform our on-site coverage.

As we did with the Washington D.C. primary elections, we’re launching a Crowdmap to track voting problems across the District, Northern Virginia and parts of Maryland. We’re asking readers to report long lines, broken machines, ballot refusals, electioneering and such at the polls using email, Twitter hashtags or on-site reports. It worked pretty well in September, though this time I’m a bit worried about Crowdmap’s servers holding up. Right now as I post this, they’re struggling to load any of our maps.

I’m particularly excited to try out Foursquare in Tuesday’s election coverage. In our attempt to take a local approach to the National Post’s Foursquare “exit poll” experiment, I set up three new venues to collect voter check-ins.: Virginia Congressional Elections 2010, Maryland Governor Election 2010 and D.C. Election 2010. Once readers check in to the correct venue, we’re asking them to submit a tip to that venue telling us who they voted for and why.

While these check-ins and tips won’t be any kind of real measurement, it will give an interesting look at how many people on Foursquare are voting in local races and how those votes are leaning – if people use it. If enough people check in, they could earn a Swarm badge, at least.

Here’s hoping something takes off.

How to build, manage and customize a Crowdmap

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On September 24, 2010

In New Technology, Surviving, TBD

So you’ve got a great idea for a user-contributed map you need to launch RIGHT NOW. Ushahidi’s Crowdmap makes it pretty easy, and hopefully this post makes it even easier. All examples shown are from TBD’s Crowdmap for D.C.’s election.

First of all, if you’re mapping a crisis, Crowdmap recommends checking our their Emergency Response Strategy first (pdf).

Also, check and see if anyone else has done your map idea with a Google Search. If someone else has already built a map of what you want to do in the same area, maybe you should just help them out instead of replicating the work.

The Quick Build

Sign up for a Crowdmap account at www.crowdmap.com and log in.

1. Click on Create New Deployment

2. On the deployment setup page, pick a url, name and tagline for your map. Keep SEO in mind here to make it easier to find. (You can edit this later, so don’t sweat it too much). Click Finish.

3. Click on admin dashboard for your map or go to http://yourmapname.crowdmap.com/admin

This is your map’s Dashboard. Bookmark it. Your map is now live and activated. If you need to launch it right now, you can – though there’s further additions and customizations you can do. Note: With the default settings, people will only be able to submit reports on the site.

More after the jump (had to do it for images…)

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