The Fundamentals of Policy Crowdsourcing
Prpić, J., Taeihagh, A., & Melton, J. (2015). The Fundamentals of Policy Crowdsourcing. Policy & Internet, Volume 7, Issue 3, Pages 340-361.
22 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2015 Last revised: 17 Dec 2015
Date Written: August 19, 2015
Abstract
What is the state of the research on crowdsourcing for policymaking? This article begins to answer this question by collecting, categorizing, and situating an extensive body of the extant research investigating policy crowdsourcing, within a new framework built on fundamental typologies from each field. We first define seven universal characteristics of the three general crowdsourcing techniques (virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration), to examine the relative tradeoffs of each modality. We then compare these three types of crowdsourcing to the different stages of the policy cycle, in order to situate the literature spanning both domains. We finally discuss research trends in crowdsourcing for public policy and highlight the research gaps and overlaps in the literature.
Keywords: crowdsourcing, policy cycle, crowdsourcing trade-offs, policy processes, policy stages, virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration
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