ICA Preconference: Crowdsourcing as a Content Analysis Tool May 24, 13:00 - 17:00 Hilton Prague Crowdsourcing is a popular method in computer science for categorizing and classifying text and objects. This preconference introduces crowdsourcing for communication researchers as an emerging content analysis method. Rather than rely on a few human coders to carry out a content analysis, the crowdsourcing approach outsources coding tasks to numerous people online (e.g., multiple people code the same item), and applies an aggregation policy to make a decision on a given item. Through a hands-on workshop and research presentations, this preconference explores: 1) Different crowdsourcing platforms to carry out a project. A demonstration will be given to show how to use two different crowdsourcing platforms: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), a well-established service, and Crowdflower, an emerging service. In the hands-on workshop, attendees will set up their own project on one of the platforms, and be guided in the steps, from set-up to extracting and analyzing the crowdworkers’ results. 2) Crowdsourcing as a method that is both cheaper and more efficient than manual content analysis. Can it also be as valid and reliable? Research presentations on both “crowdcoding” and traditional manual coding will be given, as well as a discussion about cost structure and features to ensure quality results. The Speakers/Panelists include: Hajo Boomgaarden, Professor of empirical social science method, University of Vienna Brendan Watson, Assistant professor of journalism, Michigan State University Lei Guo, Assistant professor of emerging media studies, Boston University Margrit Betke, Professor of computer science, Boston University Kate Mays, Ph.D. student in emerging media studies, Boston University This is a half-day preconference. For questions, contact Dr. Lei Guo ( guolei@bu.edu). To register, follow this link <http://www.icahdq.org/event/PC24_Crowdsourcing>.