Spontaneous volunteers often use social media as infrastructure for self- and managing their participation as a group. Social media networks have an especially low barrier to entry, as many people are already familiar with their use and mode of operation. Therefore, social media represents an attractive channel for guiding efforts of spontaneous volunteers.
CrowdTaskers community module offers volunteer managers an interface with self-organised groups that is easily established by adding the CrowdTasker chatbot to the group. Subsequently, the group can receive information about the ongoing efforts. They can also share perceived needs of their own through the chatbot, enabling information exchange and coordination with organisations and other groups. CrowdTaskers community module visualizes this data exchange for volunteer managers and allows for easy ways to comment or offer support. This allows volunteer managers to interact with groups that would otherwise not participate in information exchange via dedicated volunteer platforms.
Due to the nature of information exchange (i.e., with groups, rather than individual, registered volunteers), this functionality is intended to share perceived issues on a more abstract level than in the core crowd tasking workflow. For example, on group may observe (or even form in to) a blocked road and attempt to clear it; because they need help, they submit this info via the chatbot in their existing Telegram group as “Clear Road X” – something that a volunteer manager or other groups can react to (in the form of comments or by pledging support). This type of interaction requires more self-determined action on the end of the recipient than the tasks distributed via the CrowdTasker smartphone application.
