With great power comes great responsibility: crowdsourcing raises methodological and ethical questions for academia

Stamm, Isabell and Eklund, Lina (2017) With great power comes great responsibility: crowdsourcing raises methodological and ethical questions for academia. Impact of Social Sciences Blog (05 Apr 2017). Website.

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Abstract

Crowdsourcing offers researchers ready access to large numbers of participants, while enabling the processing of huge, unique datasets. However, the power of crowdsourcing raises several issues, including whether or not what initially emerged as a business practice can be transformed into a sound research method. Isabell Stamm and Lina Eklund argue that the complexities of managing large numbers of people mean crowdsourcing reduces participants to one faceless crowd. Applied to research, this is inherently problematic as it contradicts the basic idea that we control who participates in our studies. This not only challenges scientific rules of representativeness but also leaves methodological designs vulnerable to researchers’ implicit assumptions about the crowd.

Item Type:	Online resource (Website)
Official URL:	http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences
Additional Information:	© 2017 The Author(s) CC BY 3.0
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Date Deposited:	03 Apr 2017 14:18
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 20:54
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/72182

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