Crowdsourcing During Covid 19

Crowdsourcing is a means by which public interest is sought and leveraged to achieve specific goals, and this fascinating study highlights how the model has been used to challenge the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book investigates what factors have encouraged the use of crowdsourcing during the pandemic, as well as those issues which have restricted its use. It is illustrated with four detailed case studies, covering the fields of education and health, demonstrating how crowdsourcing as a means of crisis management has, ultimately, been used to influence and develop public policy. A timely analysis of this emerging concept, the book will appeal to researchers and practitioners across health and social care, public policy and management, and the voluntary sector more generally.

We apply a novel crowdsourcing approach to provide rapid insights on the most promising interventions to promote uptake of COVID-19 booster vaccines. In the first stage, international experts proposed 46 unique interventions. To reduce noise and potential bias, in the second stage, experts and representative general population samples from the UK and the US rated the proposed interventions on several criteria, including expected effectiveness and acceptability. Sanctions were evaluated as potentially most effective but least accepted. Interventions that received the most positive evaluations regarding both effectiveness and acceptability across evaluation groups were a day off after getting vaccinated, financial incentives, tax benefits, benefit campaigns, and mobile vaccination teams. The results provide useful insights to help governments in their decision which interventions to implement.

Significant disruption to the educational sector occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This shed a light on the need for new delivery methods and greater collaboration, which has become urgent and obvious as existing structures and traditional channels have struggled to cope or shut down. Higher education institutions often fail to crowdsource successfully because crowds differ in how they are organized compared to traditional sourcing. Instead of managing, higher education institutions work with external contributors who self-select into the process. Crowdsourcing has significant potential to transform the education space by enhancing existing methodologies and offering innovative possibilities to develop new pedagogical techniques. This offers benefits for practitioners, institutions, students and participants. Drawing on theory and best practice, illustrated with a wide range of the examples and cases, Crowdsourcing for Innovation in Higher Education offers invaluable guidance and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students in the fields of higher education, development studies, organizational studies, management science and knowledge management.

COVID-19 is profoundly affecting the ways in which we live, learn, plan, and develop. What does COVID-19 mean for the future of digital information use and delivery, and for more traditional forms of library provision? Libraries, Digital Information, and COVID gives immediate and long-term solutions for librarians responding to the challenge of COVID-19. The book helps library leaders prepare for a post-COVID-19 world, giving guidance on developing sustainable solutions. The need for sustainable digital access has now become acute, and while offering a physical space will remain important, current events are likely to trigger a shift toward off-site working and study, making online access to information more crucial. Libraries have already been providing access to digital information as a premium service. New forms and use of materials all serve to eliminate the need for direct contact in a physical space. Such spaces will come to be predicated on evolving systems of digital information, as critical needs are met by remote delivery of goods and services. Intensified financial pressure will also shape the future, with a reassessment of information and its commercial value. In response, there will be a massification of provision through increased cooperation and collaboration. These significant transitions are driving professionals to rethink and question their identities, values, and purpose. This book responds to these issues by examining the practicalities of running a library during and after the pandemic, answering questions such as: What do we know so far? How are institutions coping? Where are providers placing themselves on the digital/print and the remote/face-to-face continuums? This edited volume gives analysis and examples from around the globe on how libraries are managing to deliver access and services during COVID-19. This practical and thoughtful book provides a framework within which library directors and their staff can plan sustainable services and collections for an uncertain future. Focuses on the immediate practicalities of service provision under COVID-19 Considers longer-term strategic responses to emerging challenges Identifies key concerns and problems for librarians and library leaders Analyzes approaches to COVID-19 planning Presents and examines exemplars of best practice from around the world Offers practical models and a useful framework for the future

The relationship between citizens and city governments is gradually transforming due to the utilization of advanced information and communication technologies in order to inform, consult, and engage citizens. Citizen E-Participation in Urban Governance: Crowdsourcing and Collaborative Creativity explores the nature of the new challenges confronting citizens and local governments in the field of urban governance. This comprehensive reference source explores the role that Web 2.0 technologies play in promoting citizen participation and empowerment in the city government and is intended for scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners in the field of urban studies, urban planning, political science, public administration, and more.

This book explores communication during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Featuring the work of leading communication scholars from around the world, it offers insights and analyses into how individuals, organisations, communities, and nations have grappled with understanding and responding to the pandemic that has rocked the world. The book examines the role of journalists and news media in constructing meanings about the pandemic, with chapters focusing on public interest journalism, health workers and imagined audiences in COVID-19 news. It considers public health responses in different countries, with chapters examining community-driven approaches, communication strategies of governments and political leaders, public health advocacy, and pandemic inequalities. The role of digital media and technology is also unravelled, including social media sharing of misinformation and memetic humour, crowdsourcing initiatives, the use of data in modelling, tracking and tracing, and strategies for managing uncertainties created in a pandemic.

This book disrupts the way practitioners and academic scholars think about crowds, crowdsourcing, innovation, and new organizational forms in this emerging period of ubiquitous access to the internet. The authors argue that the current approach to crowdsourcing unnecessarily limits the crowd to offering ideas, locking out those of us with knowledge about a problem. They use data from 25 case studies of flash crowds — anonymous strangers answering online announcements to participate in a 7-10 day innovation challenge — half of whom were unleashed from the limitations of focusing on ideas. Yet, these crowds were able to develop new business models, new product lines, and offer useful solutions to global problems in fields as diverse as health care insurance, software development, and societal change. This book, which offers a theory of collective production of innovative solutions explaining the practices that the crowds organically followed, will revolutionize current assumptions about how innovation and crowdsourcing should be managed for commercial as well as societal purposes.

This edited book examines the impact of COVID-19 on selected areas of mobile studies, ranging from mobile public spaces to mobile workspaces. This book offers insights into how to leverage mobile devices, as well as features and communication to contain the pandemic. Specifically, it highlights the Chinese experience and lessons, and the country’s expertise in social capital management during the health crisis, governance of information flow and order, combating fake news and the infodemic, documenting the pandemic, and lessons learned from mobile health communication. It also discusses how small companies can survive the death of foreign trade during the pandemic. Looking beyond the pandemic, the book also explores the challenges and opportunities posed by the pandemic by investigating mobile learning, mobile journalism, mobile marketing and mobile workspaces. Given its scope, this book will enhance the global efforts in fighting the pandemic and contribute to the current body of knowledge on how to leverage mobile technologies to enhance public health communication during public health crises.