Crowds – Multiple Journalism

Reportagem Pública

Devid Ilievski — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:27:30 +0000

Reportagem Pública

Civic journalism through crowd funding and open editorial participation.

When

2013

Where

Brazil

Who

A Pública; Marina Amaral and Natalia Viana

Website

apublica.org

What is it?

The project produced a series of twelve investigative journalism reports for both television and print about contemporary Brazilian society. Reports focus on social, economic and political issues including human rights violations, police abuse, public services, corruption and the environment. The stories are published on a special website. The project is crowd-funded and an editorial board formed by the crowd-funders chose the subjects of the investigative pieces.

Jessica Mota (reporter) and Luiza Bodenmuller (former head of the editorial office)

A Pública, a non-profit Brazilian journalism agency founded in 2011 by professional journalists Marina Amaral and Natalia Viana, initiated the project. The self-stated mission of A Pública is “to produce great investigative reportages driven by public interest (…) strengthening the right to information, qualifying democratic debate and promoting human rights.”

A Pública encourages readers and other media “to steal their stories” and re-publish them, lightly edited if necessary. In case of substantial editing or shortening, the “thieves” are asked to communicate about their plans via email. All stories are distributed with a Creative Commons licence by-nd.

How does it work?

Unlike traditional journalism, the funding as well as the editorial process at journalism agency A Pública, is collective and characterized by open participation and crowd-funding. Independent journalists present their story ideas according to an intricate system of rules and procedures and produce the stories.

As a first step, Reportagem Pública was registered as a crowd funded project at Catarse, the largest Brazilian crowd-funding community. The project was open for online contributions during a two-month period, from August to September 2013. Contributions could vary from $20 to R$ 2,000 Brazilianreais(approximately US$8.70 to $870). A Publica’s goal was to raise R$47,500,00 (or $20,652), but instead it raised R$58,935 ($25,623) from 808 individual donations. As previously promised, Omidyar Foundation then doubled the amount raised via Catarse.

After collecting the funds, A Pública organized an open call for story ideas inviting journalists to submit proposals for investigative reports within the project’s five main themes: human rights, police abuse, public services, corruption and the environment. Proposals for print publications, radio, or television had to be accompanied by a budget and could not exceed R$6,000,00 each ($2,608). A Pública’s staff then selected story ideas from the open call and published a shortlist of 48 investigative reportage proposals online.

By contributing to the project, donors obtained the right to join the Editorial Board, which voted for 12 final projects to be executed with the money raised. Originally, the idea had been to elect ten story proposals, but this number was increased to twelve after fundraising exceeded expectations.

Chosen story proposals include investigations about water control in Brazil, construction of a hydroelectric dam in Belo Monte, abortion, and the Brazilian penitentiary system. During the process, Publica communicated extensively with backers and used online tools for information dissemination and social mobilization.

What is the impact?

The collaborative thinking animating the project led to its intimate connection to a series of political demonstrations in the spring of 2013 in Brazil. “Reportagem Pública” became intrinsically linked to the agenda of the demonstrations, which expressed concerns about the state of Brazil’s public services, corruption, social inequality and so on.

The project makes it evident that a crowd-funding apparatus combined with editorial decision sharing can result in modern reportage practices, reconnecting journalism with civil society. This is even more crucial in moments of intense social conflict, when societies need journalism as a tool for understanding themselves.

Why did we select it?

Reportagem Pública creates new bonds between the producers of news and the public, fostering civil society engagement and strengthening the public sphere. Introducing principles of procedural democracy and participation in the journalism cycle, the project provides a new approach to journalistic research, producing high quality investigave journalism reports and promoting public debate.

Reportagem Pública’s network philosophy reveals itself in a collaborative logic that combines a crowd-funding model with open editorial engagement. Those who help to fund and build it drive the project’s final shape, scope and objectives in ways that deepen mutual commitment.

It’s hard to exaggerate A Pública’s importance within the Brazilian political context or to dismiss the dynamic energy of its ongoing experiments in open participation and networked journalism. During the 2014 presidential campaigns, annoyed by the superficiality of public debate and control of media corporations by political interests, A Pública created a news site styled after the hugely popular card game Truco, which forces politicians to confront and respond to facts and promises or be shamed publicly.

It also started a one issue website dealing exclusively with human rights. By acting as an agency, A Pública is helping to connect a greater network of producers to its potential audience, widening these circles of relation in a concentric expansion and building on new technological resources.

Related Cases

Reportagem Pública

Civic journalism through crowd funding and open editorial participation.

Citizens’ Investigation

A participatory journalism and crowdsourcing project launched by the world-renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei on his personal blog. The project aims to discover the number and the names of the schoolchildren who died in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

TRAC FM

TRAC FM A free, cloud based software platform using radio and SMS to track citizen reports and collect citizen feedback. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_BivgFyww When 2010 Where Uganda Who Wouter Dijkstra, Javie Ssozi, Meier Boersma, Jurre de Beer Website tracfm.org What is it? TRAC FM is an innovative software platform used by media

Citizens’ Investigation

Devid Ilievski — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:42:19 +0000

Citizens’ Investigation

When

2008

Where

China

Who

Ai Weiwei

Website

aiweiwei.com

What is it?

On May 12th, 2008, an 8 Richter-scale earthquake occured in Sichuan province, China. Among the many dead were over 5,000 schoolchildren.

Artist Ai Weiwei traveled to the disaster zone to document the post-quake situation with his camera. He wanted to obtain more information about the death toll and the names of the children, but local officials obstructed his investigation.

In response to the government’s lack of transparency, and suspecting that poor construction of school buildings caused by corrupt local authorities led to the high death toll among children, Ai started an investigative journalism project to uncover the truth.

In a blog post titled “Citizen Investigation” on March 20th, 2009, he wrote: “To remember the departed, to show concern for life, to take responsibility, and for the potential happiness of the survivors, we are initiating a citizen investigation.” Issuing an open call for citizen participation, Ai succeeded in recruiting around 100 volunteers on-line for the investigation.

How does it work?

In 2006, Ai Weiwei started blogging on Sina.com, a major Internet company in China. He used his blog as a daily journal for commentary on cultural, political, and social affairs relevant to contemporary Chinese society.

After the Sichuan earthquake, Ai began to use the blog more actively as a tool for public and activist journalism in the service of the Citizens’ Investigation project. On the blog he reported regularly on the investigation and its progress, but also on the difficulties that his team experienced while conducting research on the list of child victims, including threats and obstacles posed by the local authorities and the police.

After the Chinese government shut down his blog, Ai swapped to microblogging sites such as Sin Weibo and Twitter (blocked in China), which he likewise exploited as new methods of documenting and reporting stories related to the earthquake and beyond.

He also used Weibo and Twitter to record and distribute images of his emergency surgery for a brain hemorrhage caused by a police assault in Sichuan’s capital city Chengdu, and of the complaint he filed afterwards with the police. Ai has stated that he likes Weibo’s/Twitter’s “promptness” and its ability to reach large audiences.

Why did he made it?

Ai Weiwei began Citizens’ Investigation to remember the children who perished in the Sichuan earthquake, and to console the parents who lost them. Besides this act of remembering through an assembled name list of the departed children, he has called upon the government to take responsibility.

As he stated forcefully on his blog: “They say the death of the students has nothing to do with them. They say it was inevitable, unavoidable (…) They close their mouth and do not discuss corruption…”

More specifically, Ai wanted the Chinese government to take responsibility for the sub-standard engineering of the schools. Ultimately, the artist addresses the lack of democracy in Chinese society and the dismissal of basic human and political rights by an authoritarian government.

Through Citizens’ Investigation, Ai aims to increase people’s political engagement, and to provide them with research tools and alternative means of on-line communication to share information and bring about change.

What is the impact?

Citizens’ Investigation marks a turning point in Ai’s life, work, and mission. He has used the outcome of the project for highly visible public artworks, to begin withSo Sorry, his solo exhibition in the Haus der Kunst (Munich, 2009).

The centerpiece of that show was Remembering, made of 9000 children’s backpacks running over the museum’s front facade, which together spelled out “She lived happily in this world for seven years” (a quote of a mother on Ai’s blog).

Ai also published several YouTube documentaries on Citizen’s Investigation – such as the video about Chinese lawyer Tan Zuoren’s court case (2009) and the film So Sorry (2010) – distributing the links through Twitter. The entire project was also documented in Alison Clayton’s documentary film Never Sorry (2013).

Another major project by Ai is Remembrance, a Twitter campaign featuring the voice recordings of 3444 followers reciting the names of 5205 children confirmed on the death list.After Citizens’ Investigation, Ai became a leading political activist and prominent Chinese dissident, leading to his house arrest (2010), imprisonment (2011), and foreign travel bans (2012).

As an outspoken critic with an international reputation, he continues to voice criticism of China’s censorship, lack of democracy and political freedoms, and violation of human rights. While Ai is renowned in the West for both his artistic accomplishments and his political activism, the Chinese government persecutes him in his home country.

Why did we select it?

It is an inspiring example of the effective use of social media for participatory investigative journalism. Ai has experimented creatively with new media tools and energized public journalism by giving people in China an active role in collecting, reporting, analysing, and disseminating news and information on the Sichuan Earthquake.

He did so by his particular “brand” of art at the intersection of social and political activism, aided by the Internet. His citizen journalism is an effective alternative and activist form of news gathering born out of social uprisings and discontent with mainstream media in the context of a modern authoritarian state in which censorship is all-too-common.

The artist-activist Ai Weiwei informs and reaches out to Chinese citizens via SNS’s to mobilise people through crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Like other instances of citizen journalism today (the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, the Turkish protests on Taksim Square, etc.), Ai shows that online media provide powerful new tools for promoting active citizenship and investigating social injustice in the public sphere.

Compare

“Fairytale” (2007) was the first art project for which Ai Weiwei used crowdsourcing via the Internet.

Related Cases

TRAC FM

Devid Ilievski — Sat, 16 May 2026 10:40:36 +0000

TRAC FM

A free, cloud based software platform using radio and SMS to track citizen reports and collect citizen feedback.

When

2010

Where

Uganda

Who

Wouter Dijkstra, Javie Ssozi, Meier Boersma, Jurre de Beer

Website

tracfm.org

What is it?

TRAC FM is an innovative software platform used by media and non-profit organizations in Uganda to track news reports, collect opinions, and amplify citizen voices. It enables citizens to participate in interactive radio shows through SMS voting and opinions.

Building on a vibrant radio talk-show tradition in Africa, TRAC FM provides an easy to use software tool for radio-stations to involve listeners in data-driven public debates.

TRAC FM serves a wide range of citizens in East Africa, from urban youth to farmers in rural areas. It has also been applied in TV talk shows, but radio stations have a much wider reach in Uganda.

How does it work?

In response to questions broadcasted by the radio stations, listeners contribute to the discussion through an SMS line (free of charge). The TRAC FM software ensures that all incoming SMS contributions are automatically recognized, categorized and presented in clear graphics and maps.

This “visualization” is instantly updated online, to present the latest results to the talk-show host, who shares the poll results with his studio-guests and listeners. After the radio show, infographics of collected data are published in (local) print media and freely shared online.

TRAC FM software is free and cloud based, requiring no downloads, but only a secure login with a user name and password.

It also provides selected radio stations with training on how to use TRAC FM feedback to host structured radio debates, e.g. on issues of public service delivery, such as quality of roads or the performance of civil servants.

Why did they make it?

It was developed on the basis of ethnographic research about the use of new media for political participation. The Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam published the “ICT4Accountability” research project (Uganda, 2009), which presented the platform as “a distinct form of civic media which uses ICTs to systematically collect, process and deliver accurate, comprehensible and direct data with the purpose to assist citizens in making objective assessments of the performance of who-ever is taking action on their behalf.”

TRAC FM’s mission is to provide citizens and journalists with tools to amplify voices, engage in informed debate with fellow citizens, journalists and political leaders, and promote transparency and accountability.

Since 2010, more than 1,000,000 people in Uganda have participated in radio polls on 24 radio stations, facilitated by the TRAC FM platform. Radio stations using TRAC FM include Life FM (the largest), Voice of Kigezi (the smallest), and Radio Wa from Lira (the first TRAC FM partner). NGO’s that have worked with TRAC FM include Twaweza, Hivos, Free Press Unlimited, BBC Media Action (Kenya), Farm Radio International (Uganda and Tanzania), Harvest Plus and Vitens Evides International (Uganda).

TRAC FM does not receive government funding. Instead, it generates income from NGO’s who work with the tool to do surveys, monitoring and evaluation, awareness campaigns, and use it as an early warning system. NGO’s that have worked with TRAC FM include Free Press Unlimited, BBC Media Action (Kenya), Farm Radio International (Uganda and Tanzania), Harvest Plus and Vitens Evides International (Uganda).

Wouter Dijkstra initiator of Trac FM

Currently, TRAC FM is developing new software functionality to enable citizen feedback in the form of photos, videos, and interactive voice response, and it is extending beyond Uganda, collaborating with Free Press Unlimited in Somalia and the Bill Gates Foundation in Tanzania.

Why did we select it?

TRAC FM transforms radio listeners into active participants in public debate through the introduction of a user-friendly tool and hands on training for broadcasters.

By building on a strong radio tradition and using ubiquitous SMS as platform, TRAC FM maximizes impact with limited means.

It enables radio-stations to perform data-driven journalism in real time and thereby contributes to independent, fact-based journalism, and a more engaged civil society.

Extra

Lunch at school by TRAC FM: According to a survey, many children were not getting lunch at school, although only 25% took packed lunch. The same survey also found that children who don’t eat lunch at school can not learn properly. RICNET partnered with TRAC FM to benefit from TRAC FM’s versatile platform to run a radio poll.

HIV status: The United Nations General Assembly Special Session country progress report estimated that only twenty percent of Ugandans knew their HIV-status. Question: Should doctors be allowed to test and inform patients about their HIV status without the patient’s permission? The info-graphic of the results of this poll at four partner radio stations was published alongside an article in Uganda’s most popular magazine The Independent.

Radio day campaign by TRAC FM: During the World Radio Day campaign on February 13, 2014, TRAC FM worked with 10 stations to find out what people love most about radio. Gender equality was monitored by asking respondents to indicate whether they were male or female. Over 6000 responses came in from all across the country.