What "Crowdsourcing" Obscures: Exposing the Dynamics of Connected Crowd Work during Disaster

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the current understanding of crowdsourcing may not be broad enough to capture the diversity of crowd work during disasters, or specific enough to highlight the unique dynamics of information organizing by the crowd in that context. In making this argument, this paper first unpacks the crowdsourcing term, examining its roots in open source development and outsourcing business models, and tying it to related concepts of human computation and collective intelligence. The paper then attempts to characterize several examples of crowd work during disasters using current definitions of crowdsourcing and existing models for human computation and collective intelligence, exposing a need for future research towards a framework for understanding crowd work.