If an organisation is making money from the work of participants, then it should ensure that participants are appropriately acknowledged and remunerated. There is likely to be a power imbalance between journalists and non-journalists, particularly if the journalists control the organisation’s finances. Co-creational organisations and initiatives can mitigate this imbalance by involving participants in discussions about how to compensate people for their practical and emotional labour, and how to license any intellectual property arising from this.
Tips
- Have you considered using a co-creational process to shape your organisation’s policies and procedures so that participants have an opportunity to propose terms and conditions that suit them?
- You can use your organisation’s constitution or a published list of principles to clarify mutual expectations and role boundaries.
- Have you considered licensing structures that fairly serve your co-creators?
Example
- openDemocracy publishes its content with a Creative Commons licence that allows others to reuse the content subject to certain conditions.
