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Vertical Crowdsourcing in Russia: Balancing Governance of Crowds and State–Citizen Partnership in Emergency Situations
Author(s) -
Asmolov Gregory
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
policy and internet
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.281
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 1944-2866
DOI - 10.1002/poi3.96
Subject(s) - crowdsourcing , crowds , corporate governance , government (linguistics) , general partnership , public relations , empowerment , control (management) , governmentality , sociology , state (computer science) , political science , knowledge management , business , computer science , computer security , law , finance , algorithm , linguistics , philosophy , artificial intelligence , politics
Crowdsourcing can be analyzed not only as a mechanism for empowerment, but also as operating a form of control over volunteers. This article applies Foucault's notion of governmentality to examine relations between traditional governmental institutions and users of crowdsourcing platforms in Russia. Through a comparative analysis of two emergency volunteering portals, Dobrovoletz, and Rynda.org , we describe “vertical crowdsourcing” as a strategy by traditional (government affiliated) actors to use crowdsourcing platforms to govern and control volunteers. This is in contrast to horizontally organized, or ground‐up understandings of crowd‐volunteering platforms. Two alternative discourses around the role of crowd members are further discussed: volunteers as actors who can contribute resources to the achievement of a common goal, and the crowd as a threat to central government that needs to be controlled.