Not only has the new way of spreading information allowed individuals with little journalistic training (but with good ideas) to create their own blogs and draw in traffic, but it’s also allowed reporters to interact with their readers in completely novel ways. It’s for a good reason that NYU professor Jay Rosen called consumers of news “the people formerly known as the audience.”

Indeed, the internet has allowed media to evolve from the one-to-many type of dissemination (think of Edward Murrow addressing the nation in an evening news broadcast), to a many-to-many model (think of a blogger filling out a story by using information shared in the comments). One of the people who have been closely following the development of social media tools and their effects on the news is Mathew Ingram, who currently writes for GigaOM.

Ingram, incidentally, is responsible for the crowdsourcing chapter of the “Verification Handbook” put out by the European Journalism Centre. That report explores a number of interesting topics related to responsible journalism and is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the process of information collection and dissemination. But one of the most engaging sections is the one that discusses verifying information online with the help of the crowd.

Ingram begins by highlighting an important point — crowds, as the audience, have always reacted to and affected the news. Social media and crowdsourcing, however, have made it much easier to communicate with other members of the crowd.

In Ingram’s words: “social technologies like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others allow us to engage in this kind of shared decision-making process on a much larger and broader scale, and they allow us to do it faster as well.”

The main example Ingram uses to illustrate his points is that of Andy Carvin, a former NPR strategist. Carvin created a “Twitter newsroom” of people whom he did not know personally (at least initially), but interacted with online. He used these sources to verify information that was being spread through Twitter, in hopes of preventing false news from being reported on (fake or misleading tweets have caused quite a lot of trouble in the past).

Carvin eventually built up Twitter lists of considerable scale to keep track of his sources — tweeps in Tehran, for instance. But that’s not really enough to earn trust from your followers: after all, the lists can be full of fake accounts. Going above and beyond, Carvin made an effort to “contact many of his sources directly or meet them in person to develop a relationship.” This not only helped to add legitimacy to his tweets, but also encouraged participation among his sources. Additionally, Carvin began to understand them more as individuals, rather than nameless internet inhabitants.

“The more you interact with your sources, and learn about them, the more you’ll see their strengths, weaknesses, biases and other factors that need to be weighed when considering the information they share,” Ingram states. “As your list of sources grows, you also begin to see patterns in what they see and share and report, and this provides the raw material needed to triangulate and determine exactly what is and isn’t happening.”

Another, related, reason for Carvin’s success was that he treated his followers in “a very human and approachable way… as colleagues rather than as just sources he could command to do his bidding.”

This made Carvin a respected authority on a number of news stories, and especially those coming out of the Middle East and North Africa around the time of the Arab uprisings — a time when confusion was a common state of affairs.

Ingram is quick to remind his readers, however, that as someone looking to verify the facts around an event via social media, “you are also a source of information for others.” So, it’s best to be very up-front and honest about the information you possess (or lack).

Ultimately, verifying information online, as Carvin did, takes a lot of work and needs to be done in a responsible manner. If done incorrectly, the crowd can misinterpret your statements and actually make matters worse by spreading false information. If done carefully, however, the process can be very helpful not only to journalists, but anyone looking to verify information or find an answer to a problem.

“With any given piece of information, there are likely to be knowledgeable people in your social circle (or in their broader web of connections) who know the truth about that incident or event,” Ingram writes. “You just have to find them.”

Read the full report here.