StoryPort is a crowdsourcing platform especially for the use of journalism. With this easy to use online tool, anyone can with ease create topics they want peoples’ opinion on. Not only is it great for journalists, but also for anyone who wants their opinion to be heard.

Users can create private or public topics where other users, with respective permissions, can then write what they want. These story fragments written into a topic will be analyzed with our algorithm, which will then create one summary, by combining similarities. All of the original texts can still be easily read and user votes can be given to raise or lower the relevance of a fragment. When creating private topics, the reading and writing brights can be shared via a traditional link or for example a QR-code. Log-in to the service happens with existing accounts, like Facebook, for user convenience as well as for user recognition.

Even though the service resembles other services like forums, Facebook and other social media, it is much more than that. It’s a tool for professional to gather information from everyday users as well as a more “official” channel for users to express their mind.

Prototype is live at http://storyport.capstone.utu.fi/