On 8 June 2017 we invited 28 students from the First Draft Partner Network’s Academic partners—City University, the University of Sheffield, the University of Leeds and Goldsmiths—to City’s campus in London for a social newsgathering training and innovation sprint: the inaugural Pop-Up Newsroom.

We didn’t prepare the students in advance by introducing them to tools or techniques. We didn’t tell them anything except that they would be trained in social newsgathering and we would be monitoring the goings on of election day.