Title of the Essay, Author, and Date

Crowdsourcing and Campaign Reform by Benjamin van Loon (October 21, 2015)

Title of the Reflection

Crowd voting

First Impression

An Essay about gathering resources or ideas from other people.

Quote

To take on the influence of money is not to take on one party, but both parties,

Reflection Paper

Crowdsourcing means involving a lot of people in a small pieces of project. It is a form of engagement like for example “crowd voting”. Crowdsourcing is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from an on line community. Crowdsourcing is indeed a big help especially in doing campaign reform since millions of people are now already engaging and are also aware with the digital age. People could now freely express their notions regarding to the “political” matters. Because of crowdsourcing, politics doing a campaign reform could be able to connect with the community who are also living in the on line world, where they are mostly active. People has the right to intervene to the government matters. They are given the rights to vote, a right that is so powerful that the whole country will be affected by its result. We are part of a democratic country. Crowdsourcing is an open call for anybody to participate in a task open on line.

And I might add that technologies had also been a great help although it still has a lot of disadvantages. It has been the kingdom of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a smart move knowing that people nowadays are now living “on line”. The internet have been its exceptional instrument to expose the platforms and their ways of creating policies. You will know the people’s notions and opinion, you will know their reactions over the said matter, and there are only 3 feedbacks you must expect from a crowd. Agreeing, vehemently disagreeing or some people that will just shrug because they practically don’t care.

You see how powerful individuals are? The thing is these politician must find a way to win the crowd’s trust and vote.

However, crowdsourcing has limitations, despite its ideal democratic, are its exclusionary applications such as the person without smartphones, internet connection, or those who are digitally illiterate citizen. You cannot help crowdsourcing if you are not part of the crowd that is if you are on the wrong side of the digital world.

5 things I learned:

1. Introduction of digital crowdsourcing into the political process.
2. The idea of a trustee president, “well-liked leader” who declares her presidential candidacy on a single issue. After this issue is resolved, the trustee president would step down and hand over the reigns to the VP for the remainder of the term. For finance reform, this trustee president “would use every power of the executive to get Congress to enact fundamental reform”—and then move on.
3. Crowdsourcing is a digital-age concept and term.
4. Crowdsourcing as “an open call for anybody to participate in a task open online, where ‘the crowd’ refers to an undefined group of people who participate.
5. Increased reliance on technology for economic participation, communication and citizenship casts crowdsourcing as a natural outgrowth of our cultural evolution, and makes sense that crowdsourcing would be applied to politics.

5 integrative Questions:

1. Why there is an attempt to master cross-platform messaging, which have been making innovative strides in marketing?
2. What was the issue of fundamental reform where an ordinary president may not be able to lead?
3. Where a task is specifically assigned to a defined agent is this a contract to outsourcing?
4. What are the limitations of the crowdsourcing process, as can be read as a downside of crowdsourcing in a democratic context?
5. Why even before the digital age, income and literacy have long been limiting factors for democratic participation, did they found new media for the modern age?