Electionland: the biggest social newsgathering project ever

Electionland was a unique collaborative project to track and cover voting problems during the 2016 US elections across the whole country and in real-time. It was also the largest social newsgathering effort ever undertaken with more than 600 people monitoring for any instances of voter suppression and more than 400 journalists chasing down the stories in the field. The need to cover the vote was particularly urgent as states passed laws that could affect citizens’ access to the ballot box, and one of the presidential candidates cast doubt on the validity of the entire system. In this session those responsible for key parts of this ambitious project will tell you how we did it, where the biggest challenges lay and how it all played out on the day.