Crowdsourcing: A New Way to Citizen Empowerment

Abstract

Empowerment has for a long time held a prominent place in the theoretical development of fields as diverse as development studies, community psychology or studies on social movements and organisations, among other areas. In parallel, multilateral agencies and non-profit organizations have launched empowerment processes in different sociocultural and political contexts with an uneven impact. On the other hand, the advance of Web 2.0 technologies has allowed crowdsourcing to establish itself as one of the most successful collaborative approaches through the internet, particularly in the business world. In this chapter the authors present a definition of the concept empowerment-oriented crowdsourcing on the basis of the review of the theoretical and practical developments of both dynamics. The objective is to delineate the framework that facilitates the implementation of processes of citizen empowerment through crowdsourcing projects that seek social benefit.