Citizens around the world use crowdsourced platforms to hold governments accountable, to fill gaps in infrastructural and municipal services, and to call attention to issues that impact everyday lives, such as sexual violence and environmental injustice.
Crowdsourcing, Constructing and Collaborating brings together individuals and groups engaged in building and sustaining platforms for online collaboration and participation, to explore and reflect on the methods, challenges and potentials of the technology of crowdsourcing, and mapping of social impact. It brings together people directly involved in a range of projects from around the world-I Paid A Bribe, Environmental Justice Atlas, HarassMap, Intolerance Tracker, Visualizing Palestine, and Humanitarian Tracker-to critically reflect on the tactics, methods, challenges and opportunities of crowdsourcing and crowd-mapping as tools for social, environmental and political change.
In an accessible and visually engaging style, it shows how participatory digital media become crucial components of journalistic, scholarly and activist practices, addressing a range of topical challenges, including economic corruption, sexual harassment, political violence and environmental conflict, in diverse geographic contexts.
Siddharth Peter de Souza is Assistant Professor in AI and Society at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM) at the University of Warwick, UK.
Nida Rehman is the Lucian and Rita Caste Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and recently completed her PhD in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. She is a co-founder of Intolerance Tracker. Her work looks at the ecological, political and historical dimensions of urban environmental change, particularly in South Asia.
Saba Sharma is a co-founder of Intolerance Tracker and has recently completed her PhD from the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. She previously worked at the Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi.