Books by Tanja Aitamurto
Committee for the Future, Parliament of Finland, 2012
This book illuminates the role of crowdsourcing in policy-making By drawing on several cases arou... more This book illuminates the role of crowdsourcing in policy-making By drawing on several cases around the world. From crowdsourced constitution reform in Iceland and participatory budgeting in Canada, to open innovation for services and crowdsourced federal strategy process in the United States, the book analyzes the impact of crowdsourcing on citizen agency in the public sphere. It also serves as a handbook with practical advice for successful crowdsourcing in a variety of public domains.
The author, Tanja Aitamurto, is a visiting researcher at the Liberation
Technology Program at Stanford University. She examines
how collective intelligence, whether harvested by crowdsourcing,
co-creation or open innovation, impacts processes in journalism,
public policy-making and design. This book is based on a report
she delivered to the Parliament of Finland about crowdsourcing
for democratic processes.
In the book, we describe and analyze the role of social media in democratic processes, particular... more In the book, we describe and analyze the role of social media in democratic processes, particularly in the context of Finnish society.
Joukkoistaminen (engl. crowdsourcing)
yleistyy eri alueilla avaruudentutkimuksesta
elokuvien teke... more Joukkoistaminen (engl. crowdsourcing)
yleistyy eri alueilla avaruudentutkimuksesta
elokuvien tekemiseen
ja journalismista yhteiskuntapoliittisiin prosesseihin.
Eduskunnan tulevaisuusvaliokunta
tilasi joulukuussa 2011 raportin selvittääkseen,
kuinka joukkoistamista voidaan käyttää
demokraattisissa prosesseissa.
Selvityksen pohjalta muotoutui tämä kirja,
joka hahmottaa joukkoistamisen käyttöä ja
mahdollisuuksia yhteiskuntapoliitikassa. Kirja
esittelee joukkoistamista ilmiönä sekä kartoittaa
joukkoistamisen parhaita käytäntöjä.
Kirja luo kattavan katsauksen joukkoistamiseen,
sen rooliin poliittisessa päätöksenteossa
ja antaa käytännön ohjeita joukkoistamiseen.
Kirjan rakenne on seuravanlainen: Ensin
luodaan katsaus siihen, kuinka joukkoistamista
käytetään eri aloilla. Tämä luku vastaa
usein esitettyihin kysymyksiin joukkoistamisesta
ja siihen liittyvistä käsitteistä kuten
joukkorahoitus ja mikrotyö. Luvun tarkoitus
on luoda yleiskuvaa joukkoistamisen käyttömahdollisuuksista.
Sen jälkeen tarkastellaan
kansainvälisten esimerkkitapausten avulla,
kuinka joukkoistamista käytetään yhteiskuntapolitiikassa.
Osa näistä tapauksista on
esitelty lyhyissä videoissa tulevaisuusvaliokunnan
verkkosivuilla osoitteessa http://
web.eduskunta.fi/Resource.phx/valiokunnat/
valiokunta-tuv01/index.htx.
Papers by Tanja Aitamurto
Digital Journalism, 2023
In this introduction to the special issue Design+Journalism, we present a manifesto about the fut... more In this introduction to the special issue Design+Journalism, we present a manifesto about the future of design and journalism. this manifesto discusses the key areas that need attention in order to develop a more robust bridge between design and journalism. the manifesto is structured by the following three notions: (1) recognizing design contributions in the field; (2) Integrating design into digital journalism studies through cultural shift; and (3) Widening the scope of the journalism design industry-academia interface. First, we argue that design artifacts, requirements, meth- ods, and implications ought to be recognized as scholarly contri- butions in digital journalism studies. Second, we need a profound cultural shift in digital journalism studies, which entails conceptu- alizing design as a cultural practice, understanding design as a continuous process of shaping, and updating pedagogical approaches. third, we argue that transversal integration between academia and industry should be more heterogeneous in terms of geopolitics, cultural norms, and values. A varied set of industries should be engaged beyond north America and Western Europe. We argue that integrating these three aspects in digital journalism studies will strengthen the understanding of design as an integral part of journalism and digital journalism studies.
Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’21), 2021
Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR), or 360°video, engages users in immersive viewing experiences. Ho... more Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR), or 360°video, engages users in immersive viewing experiences. However, as users watch one part of the 360°view, they will necessarily miss out on events happening in other parts of the sphere. Consequently, fear of missing out (FOMO) is unavoidable. However, users can also experience the joy of missing out (JOMO). In a repeated measures, mixed methods design, we examined the fear and joy of missing out (FOMO and JOMO) and sense of presence in two repeat viewings of a 360°film using a head-mounted display. We found that users experienced both FOMO and JOMO. FOMO was caused by the users' awareness of parallel events in the spherical view, but users also experienced JOMO. FOMO did not compromise viewers' sense of presence, and FOMO also decreased in the second viewing session, while JOMO remained constant. The findings suggest that FOMO and JOMO can be two integral qualities in an immersive video viewing experience and that FOMO may not be as negative a factor as previously thought. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Virtual reality; Empirical studies in HCI.
In IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) (IEEE’19), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE),, 2019
This paper examines the effects of participants' preferred point of view of two protagonists, and... more This paper examines the effects of participants' preferred point of view of two protagonists, and their motivation for this preference, on two viewings of a cinematic 360-degree video filmed from the first person perspective. Before watching the film, which dramatized gender bias in a STEM workplace, participants were asked to state whether they preferred to view the film from the point of view (POV) of a male protagonist, a female protagonist, or make no selection. They were then asked why they held this preference. Their answers were predictive. Participants' tracked head movements, and the events participants recalled from the film, differed according to their pre-stated preference and motivation.
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2019
While new media technologies hold the potential to serve journalism's dual goals of informing and... more While new media technologies hold the potential to serve journalism's dual goals of informing and engaging the public, these technologies also challenge the journalistic norms of accuracy, impartiality and transparency. The key question in this workshop is: How can HCI support accurate, impartial and transparent journalism? This question is ever more timely as the need for accurate and credible journalism is growing amid the proliferation of disinformation and opinion manipulation.
New Media & Society, 2018
In visual journalism, the adoption of new technologies often leads to renegotiation of normative ... more In visual journalism, the adoption of new technologies often leads to renegotiation of normative boundaries, and the case of 360° video is no exception. Two normative paradoxes emerge in journalists’ attempts to deploy 360° video to provide emotionally engaging and factually relevant content. The first paradox is that the 360° view is considered to provide a more accurate representation of events, but the viewer’s freedom to choose the field of view can lead to a less accurate picture of the story. The second paradox is that, by manipulating authentic imagery in the pursuit of more accurate and objective reporting, journalists compromise on traditional notions of accuracy and objectivity. These paradoxes push visual journalism away from the “as is” and toward the “as if,” detaching visual journalism from its naturalistic claims. This leads to increasingly blurred boundaries between journalism and other communication practices such as advertising and propaganda.
New Media & Society, 2020
This article examines the impact of augmented reality (AR) visualizations on users’ sense of phys... more This article examines the impact of augmented reality (AR) visualizations on users’ sense of physical presence, knowledge gain, and perceptions of the authenticity of journalistic visuals. In a mixed experimental design, 79 participants were randomly assigned to view three The New York Times articles on a mobile phone featuring one of three viewing modalities: (1) AR visualizations, (2) interactive (non-AR) visualizations, or (3) non-interactive, static visualizations. AR induced a greater sense of physical presence compared to the other modalities. The findings suggest that immersive properties of AR can contribute to journalism’s goal of engaging the audience. However, AR was not a superior medium for informing the participants, and the viewing modality did not have an effect on the perceived authenticity of the visuals. The findings indicate a need for more efficient ways to relay information through journalistic AR visualizations while keeping the user engaged in an immersive ex...
Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality: Applications in Health, Cultural Heritage, and Industry, 2018
This paper examines the impact of an augmented reality (AR) tour guide on users' art engagement. ... more This paper examines the impact of an augmented reality (AR) tour guide on users' art engagement. In a between-subjects experiment in an art museum, users' art engagement with a novel video see-through augmented reality guide was examined against user behavior with a book guide. The AR users' liking of art increased more than the book users', whereas the book users learned more. The AR users enjoyed using the application, and it helped them engage with art; however, they felt physical fatigue from holding the tablet and preferred interacting with a still image over the live augmentations. The users were concerned about the screen time the AR guide required; it distracted them from looking at the art with the naked eye, creating more of an impression of learning rather than actual learning. The findings call for more impactful AR applications with art as the focal point.
New Media & Society, 2021
Virtual reality (VR) has become a more common medium both in professional and in personal consume... more Virtual reality (VR) has become a more common medium both in professional and in personal consumer use in recent years. Broadly, hardware has continued to decline in price and increase in portability. Building on this work, scholarly inquiry has expanded from traditional VR to cinematic virtual reality (CVR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), which combines several types of reality in one medium. The term XR refers to all aforementioned real-and-virtual combined environments. As a parallel development, the cost of producing and publishing VR content has become easier with new platforms such as YouTube Virtual Reality and Facebook 360°. Consequently, VR is being produced, published, and consumed more than ever, and as a result, VR has permeated numerous domains (Aitamurto, 2019). The increased availability of consumer VR has also broadened the field of researchers and designers using these platforms (Bevan et al., 2019). While entertainment and gaming remain the dominan...
We address the question of aggregating the preferences of voters in the context of participatory ... more We address the question of aggregating the preferences of voters in the context of participatory budgeting. We scrutinize the voting method currently used in practice, underline its drawbacks, and introduce a novel scheme tailored to this setting, which we call “Knapsack Voting”. We study its strategic properties we show that it is strategy-proof under a natural model of utility (a dis-utility given by the `1 distance between the outcome and the true preference of the voter), and “partially” strategy-proof under general additive utilities. We extend Knapsack Voting to more general settings with revenues, deficits or surpluses, and prove a similar strategy-proofness result. To further demonstrate the applicability of our scheme, we discuss its implementation on the digital voting platform that we have deployed in partnership with the local government bodies in many cities across the nation. From voting data thus collected, we present empirical evidence that Knapsack Voting works well...
While crowdsourcing is increasingly used for data gathering and problem solving, the power relati... more While crowdsourcing is increasingly used for data gathering and problem solving, the power relations in crowdsourced processes remain largely unexamined. Especially in crowdsourced public policymaking, an understanding of these processes is essential for verifying the data. For understanding the social processes behind the data and designing crowdsourcing technologies and processes suitable for public policymaking, it is important to understand power structures and relations within the crowd and between the crowd and the sourcer: Who has the power, what is being produced through crowdsourcing, and especially how and under which conditions. In this paper we develop a typology of worker relations in crowdsourcing by using Marx theory of alienation. The theory serves as a lens to compare and contrast tools for crowdengagement in public policymaking. We show how different types of crowdsourcing can be described as levels of alienation where the worker, the consumer, their relations, and...
What vision of social interaction is sought and advanced through participatory urban media? In th... more What vision of social interaction is sought and advanced through participatory urban media? In this workshop paper, I put forward two dominant ways that social interaction is characterized in the discourse around the design of participatory urban media, broadly construed as material and political. Each of these visions is illustrated through a recent case that reveals its strengths and limitations. I further draw on these cases to highlight the potentials and challenges of the kinds of social interactions that are sought and cultivated through the integration of digital media on physical spaces.
Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2018
This paper examines the sense of presence, attitude change, perspective-taking, and usability of ... more This paper examines the sense of presence, attitude change, perspective-taking, and usability of a split-sphere, first-person perspective 360 degree video about gender inequality, in which people can choose to watch the narrative from the male or female character's perspective. Sixty-seven participants were randomly assigned to watch (1) the video in 360 degree split-view in a head-mounted display, (2) the same film as 180 degree in a HMD, or (3) a flat control version of the video on a laptop. The 360 degree split-sphere increased the viewers' feeling of personal responsibility for resolving gender inequality, desire to rewatch the video, fear of missing out, and feeling of missing the full story. The 180 degree video created the strongest sense of presence, embodiment, and understanding of the character. However, people with greater egocentric projection onto the male character felt less responsible for resolving gender inequality, particularly in the 360 degree split-view.
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 2018
While crowds online are increasingly used for data gathering and problem solving, the relationshi... more While crowds online are increasingly used for data gathering and problem solving, the relationships and structures within these processes remain largely unexamined. For understanding the usage of crowdsourcing and to design appropriate technologies and processes, it is important to understand how different tools support relationships in these contexts. Based on an extensive literature review of existing crowdsourcing tools and practices, we contribute with the development of a typology of alienation in crowdsourcing by using Marx’s theory of alienation. The theory serves as a lens to compare and contrast a number of currently available tools for crowdsourcing, focusing on how relationships between participants are supported and capitalized within the tool. We show how different types of crowdsourcing practices can be described in terms of alienation where the producer, the producers, the consumers, and products are connected in different modes of participation. This systematical application of Marx theory of alienation provides a way to compare the technical support for social relationships in a number of platforms used for crowdsourcing.
The Theory and Practice of Legislation, 2017
While national and local governments increasingly deploy crowdsourcing in lawmaking as an open go... more While national and local governments increasingly deploy crowdsourcing in lawmaking as an open government practice, it remains unclear how crowdsourcing creates value when it is applied in policymaking. Therefore, in this article, we examine value creation in crowdsourcing for public policymaking. We introduce a framework for analysing value creation in public policymaking in the following three dimensions: democratic, epistemic and economic. Democratic value is created by increasing transparency, accountability, inclusiveness and deliberation in crowdsourced policymaking. Epistemic value is developed when crowdsourcing serves as a knowledge search mechanism and a learning context. Economic value is created when crowdsourcing makes knowledge search in policymaking more efficient and enables government to produce policies that better address citizens' needs and societal issues. We show how these tenets of value creation are manifest in crowdsourced policymaking by drawing on instances of crowdsourced lawmaking, and we also discuss the contingencies and challenges preventing value creation.
Information, Communication & Society, 2016
This article examines the demographic characteristics, motivations, and expectations of participa... more This article examines the demographic characteristics, motivations, and expectations of participants in a crowdsourced off-road traffic law reform in Finland. We found that the participants were mainly educated, full-time working professional males with a strong interest in off-road traffic. Though a minority, the women participating in the process produced more ideas than the men. The crowd was motivated by a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsic motivations included fulfilling civic duty, affecting the law for sociotropic reasons, to deliberate with and learn from peers. Extrinsic motivations included changing the law for financial gain or other benefits. Participation in crowdsourced policy-making was an act of grassroots advocacy, whether to pursue one's own interest or more altruistic goals, such as protecting nature. The motivations driving the participation were in part similar to those observed in traditional democratic processes, such as elections as well as other online collaborations such as crowdsourced journalism and citizen science. The crowds' behavior was, however, paradoxical. They participated despite the fact that they did not expect that their contributions would affect the law.
Policy & Internet, 2016
This article examines the emergence of democratic deliberation in a crowdsourced law reform proce... more This article examines the emergence of democratic deliberation in a crowdsourced law reform process. The empirical context of the study is a crowdsourced legislative reform in Finland, initiated by the Finnish government. The findings suggest that online exchanges in the crowdsourced process qualify as democratic deliberation according to the classical definition. We introduce the term "crowdsourced deliberation" to mean an open, asynchronous, depersonalized, and distributed kind of online deliberation occurring among self-selected participants in the context of an attempt by government or another organization to open up the policymaking or lawmaking process. The article helps to characterize the nature of crowdsourced policymaking and to understand its possibilities as a practice for implementing open government principles. We aim to make a contribution to the literature on crowdsourcing in policymaking, participatory and deliberative democracy and, specifically, the newly emerging subfield in deliberative democracy that focuses on "deliberative systems."
This article reports a pioneering case study of a crowdsourced law-reform process in Finland. In ... more This article reports a pioneering case study of a crowdsourced law-reform process in Finland. In the crowdsourcing experiment, the public was invited to contribute to the law-reform process by sharing their knowledge and ideas for a better policy. This article introduces a normative design framework of five principles for crowdsourced policymaking: inclusiveness, accountability, transparency, modularity, and synthesis. Inclusiveness, accountability, and transparency are overarching principles for crowdsourced policymaking. Modularity and synthesis support these overarching principles and are instrumental in achieving the main goals of crowdsourced policymaking, namely, an efficient search for knowledge and democratic deliberation among the participants. These principles apply to both the design of the process and the medium that the process takes place in, i.e., the technology facilitating crowdsourcing. This article analyzes the design of the crowdsourced off-road traffic law experiment in Finland using the five principles described above and provides a future research agenda for examining design aspects in crowdsourced policymaking.
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Books by Tanja Aitamurto
The author, Tanja Aitamurto, is a visiting researcher at the Liberation
Technology Program at Stanford University. She examines
how collective intelligence, whether harvested by crowdsourcing,
co-creation or open innovation, impacts processes in journalism,
public policy-making and design. This book is based on a report
she delivered to the Parliament of Finland about crowdsourcing
for democratic processes.
yleistyy eri alueilla avaruudentutkimuksesta
elokuvien tekemiseen
ja journalismista yhteiskuntapoliittisiin prosesseihin.
Eduskunnan tulevaisuusvaliokunta
tilasi joulukuussa 2011 raportin selvittääkseen,
kuinka joukkoistamista voidaan käyttää
demokraattisissa prosesseissa.
Selvityksen pohjalta muotoutui tämä kirja,
joka hahmottaa joukkoistamisen käyttöä ja
mahdollisuuksia yhteiskuntapoliitikassa. Kirja
esittelee joukkoistamista ilmiönä sekä kartoittaa
joukkoistamisen parhaita käytäntöjä.
Kirja luo kattavan katsauksen joukkoistamiseen,
sen rooliin poliittisessa päätöksenteossa
ja antaa käytännön ohjeita joukkoistamiseen.
Kirjan rakenne on seuravanlainen: Ensin
luodaan katsaus siihen, kuinka joukkoistamista
käytetään eri aloilla. Tämä luku vastaa
usein esitettyihin kysymyksiin joukkoistamisesta
ja siihen liittyvistä käsitteistä kuten
joukkorahoitus ja mikrotyö. Luvun tarkoitus
on luoda yleiskuvaa joukkoistamisen käyttömahdollisuuksista.
Sen jälkeen tarkastellaan
kansainvälisten esimerkkitapausten avulla,
kuinka joukkoistamista käytetään yhteiskuntapolitiikassa.
Osa näistä tapauksista on
esitelty lyhyissä videoissa tulevaisuusvaliokunnan
verkkosivuilla osoitteessa http://
web.eduskunta.fi/Resource.phx/valiokunnat/
valiokunta-tuv01/index.htx.
Papers by Tanja Aitamurto
The author, Tanja Aitamurto, is a visiting researcher at the Liberation
Technology Program at Stanford University. She examines
how collective intelligence, whether harvested by crowdsourcing,
co-creation or open innovation, impacts processes in journalism,
public policy-making and design. This book is based on a report
she delivered to the Parliament of Finland about crowdsourcing
for democratic processes.
yleistyy eri alueilla avaruudentutkimuksesta
elokuvien tekemiseen
ja journalismista yhteiskuntapoliittisiin prosesseihin.
Eduskunnan tulevaisuusvaliokunta
tilasi joulukuussa 2011 raportin selvittääkseen,
kuinka joukkoistamista voidaan käyttää
demokraattisissa prosesseissa.
Selvityksen pohjalta muotoutui tämä kirja,
joka hahmottaa joukkoistamisen käyttöä ja
mahdollisuuksia yhteiskuntapoliitikassa. Kirja
esittelee joukkoistamista ilmiönä sekä kartoittaa
joukkoistamisen parhaita käytäntöjä.
Kirja luo kattavan katsauksen joukkoistamiseen,
sen rooliin poliittisessa päätöksenteossa
ja antaa käytännön ohjeita joukkoistamiseen.
Kirjan rakenne on seuravanlainen: Ensin
luodaan katsaus siihen, kuinka joukkoistamista
käytetään eri aloilla. Tämä luku vastaa
usein esitettyihin kysymyksiin joukkoistamisesta
ja siihen liittyvistä käsitteistä kuten
joukkorahoitus ja mikrotyö. Luvun tarkoitus
on luoda yleiskuvaa joukkoistamisen käyttömahdollisuuksista.
Sen jälkeen tarkastellaan
kansainvälisten esimerkkitapausten avulla,
kuinka joukkoistamista käytetään yhteiskuntapolitiikassa.
Osa näistä tapauksista on
esitelty lyhyissä videoissa tulevaisuusvaliokunnan
verkkosivuilla osoitteessa http://
web.eduskunta.fi/Resource.phx/valiokunnat/
valiokunta-tuv01/index.htx.
creating a historical timeline from 2006, when the concept was coined, to date. The book gives a succinct overview of the classic literature on theories of collective intelligence and cites empirical evidence of collective intelligence, thus illustrating why
the power of the many can be a better model for problem solving than the traditional one, which relies on a few knowledgeable experts. Brabham reviews motivation factors that drive people to participate, and peeks into the future of crowdsourcing by
creating an optimistic scenario in which crowdsourcing will become almost like a commoditized service commodity used for national security, journalism and health. The book concludes with a glossary for relevant terms in crowdsourcing with succinct
definitions.
reputation in online interactions, and management of online communities. The
common denominator is the customer’s active role, or, rather the “prosumer’s”, the term used to describe the hybrid combination of the roles of a consumer and producer that comes with collaborative production. This volume examines the user within a networked web of decentralized, voluntary co-production of goods, services, and knowledge.
Crowdsourcing channels information to journalists quickly and from a large number of people, thus contributing to the journalistic process in several ways. Crowdsourcing requires opening up the journalistic process, and thus, crowdsourcing becomes an open journalistic practice. Crowdsourcing enhances both knowledge search and discovery, strengthens reader- relationship, and provides journalists with a window to readers’ world and tacit knowledge about their preferences (Aitamurto, 2013, 2015a).
Crowdfunding is a subtype of crowdsourcing, and it channels the crowd’s resources to jour- nalism as funding, with a growing number of stories financed this way. When used to fund journalism, the consequent journalism product becomes a more open product with journalism being a shared economic venture (Aitamurto, 2015b).
Crowdsourcing, however, brings also costs and complexities to the journalistic process. The method requires substantial human resources and also challenges traditional journalistic practices, norms, and ideals. The balance between the benefits and costs create the value of crowdsourcing in journalism. In this chapter, I introduce a framework for analyzing the value of crowdsourcing as an open journalistic practice. I first define crowdsourcing and its boundaries between other methods of large-scale online collaboration and participatory jour- nalistic practices, going on to illustrate how crowdsourcing has been used in journalism, before presenting a framework for analyzing the value of crowdsourcing in journalism.