working with them to ensure we all have better information when it matters most. Andy Carvin, who recently left the job of senior social strategist at NPR, is perhaps the most celebrated and experienced practitioner of crowdsourced verification. He said the key is to work with the crowd to, as the NPR motto goes, “create a more informed public.” “When a big story breaks, we shouldn’t just be using social media to send out the latest headlines or ask people for their feedback after the fact,” he said in a keynote address at the International Journalism Festival. He continued: We shouldn’t even stop at asking for their help when trying to cover a big story. We should be more transparent about what we know and don’t know. We should actively address rumors being circulated online. Rather than pretending they’re not circulating, or that they’re not our concern, we should tackle them head-on, challenging the public to question them, scrutinize them, understand where they might have come from, and why. This book is a guide to help all of us - journalists, emergency responders, citizen reporters and everyone else - gain the skills and knowledge necessary to work together during critical events to separate news from noise, and ultimately to improve the quality of information available in our society, when it matters most. 12