Crowdsourcing is becoming increasingly important and relevant to society today, especially given the current ongoing pandemic. In relation to specific organizations/companies that use crowdsourcing, the New Zealand museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, first comes to mind. Their project, The Current, crowdsources opinions from visitors on important issues affecting our society like climate change and other ecological issues. As an advantage the project is open to people from all walks of life and backgrounds however, this also means that children have access to this unmonitored and from observation they misuse it because they don’t understand the significance of this data gathering.

Another important project is Be My Eyes, crowdsourcing volunteers to help the low-vision and blind community. This has the advantage of allowing this community to lead relatively normal lives without intervention because of the assistance of volunteers with everyday tasks. The functionality, ability, and broad applications crowdsourcing has to create accessibility for marginalized communities is very important in the new digital age. While Be My Eyes has bugs as many apps do, this technology and its use of crowdsourcing is constantly becoming more user friendly and improving, while providing volunteers an easy and accessible opportunity to volunteer for individuals in need.

I believe that crowdfunding does lean close to crowdsourcing. In many cases with crowdfunding for the arts, the donors have more control and ability to participate in the projects that they fund. Especially with the current pandemic, crowdsourcing platforms are becoming increasingly popular to provide artists much needed income and assistance. One such platform sponsored by the Arts Foundation in New Zealand is Boosted, which allows for anyone to create a fundraiser for artistic projects, accessibility requirements, and to fund the payment of artists at a living wage. One such benefit for the donor is as the Arts Foundation is a charity, a third of any donation the donor can receive back in a donation tax credit. Another benefit is the satisfaction of sponsoring significant artworks, installations, and exhibitions along with the artists and communities behind them. This project creates funding opportunities for groups that may not otherwise receive funding for a variety of reasons and creating a sense of community with the funders and donors who receive regular updates on the progress of the project.

Finally we could look to beta testing and its application in crowdsourcing in which companies crowdsource gamers to test new games, a cost effective method for the company to find testers to check bugs and issues with the game and benefits for the testers of trying a new game before anyone else can. Beta testing with crowdsourcing can happen in other industries and provide other benefits than those listed while also providing some disadvantages than paying people to test software and hardware, applications, or other technological products.

Crowdsourcing can lead to misappropriation, lack of compensation, and issues around intellectual property particularly when corporations which can afford designers crowdsource entries to a competition for the winners to receive a fraction of what they would if they company just hired a designer. Crowdsourcing in this application and others can lead to exploitation of the individuals providing the crowdsourcing material for organizations and companies. Crowdsourcing of data can lead to issues around privacy concerns if not addressed with participants beforehand, especially in providing survey feedback to online surveys or with mass data crowdsourcing that multiple companies do.

There are issues with confidentiality, such as not knowing if groups are left out of these types of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing data tends to get the same people for similar projects as they are the ones willing to participate and can have other negative impacts and applications other than the ones that have been mentioned. However, crowdsourcing can still have positive impacts on the organizations that use it, including being able to create unique solutions to problems, be cheap for companies, broader access and testing capabilities, and larger group sizes.

The New Zealand government and its approach to crowdsourcing already provide ample opportunities for crowdsourcing from the public, including random polling, surveys, petitions, and crowdsourcing social media commentary, among other crowdsourcing that occurs from both local and central government. There are ample opportunities for people to provide feedback and crowdsource data collection, information, and provide the government with solutions to problems, among other things. This is promising for how crowdsourcing could be used in other countries for the benefit of everyone.