The online platform that told the public’s story during the England riots
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
London based online media company StreamUK today released statistics from one of their media platforms that shows its largest ever usage during the London Riots. Stream CrowdSourcer which is used by broadcasters such as BBC News and publishers such as The Guardian allows its user to receive mass amounts of multi-media content from all over the world, enabling the news service to evaluate and publish the best of those assets.
For the four days when the riots were most intense, StreamUK’s reports show over 7,000 submissions of both video and image content from citizens all over the country with a story to tell. The record number of submissions throughout this period stands as a 657% increase from the previous month: adding to a staggering total of over 24,000 submissions for the month of August.
Created in 2007, the CrowdSourcer platform has been used for various national and international campaigns to invite first-hand contributions from the public. As broadcasters and journalists become skilled in the use of user-generated content, CrowdSourcer, through its flexible API, is able to integrate further into internal workflows.
StreamUK CEO Duncan Burbidge notes that CrowdSourcer is becoming increasing valuable for news publishers worldwide; “User generated content has a fundamental place in news broadcasting, especially with mobile devices becoming more sophisticated. We’re continuing to invest in the platform by improving the intelligence of the search algorithms and image verification checks.”
