Abstract
Large-scale crowdsourcing platforms are a key tool allowing researchers in the area of multimedia content analysis to gain insight into how users interpret social multimedia. The goal of this article is to support this process in a practical manner that opens the path for productive exploitation of complex human interpretations of multimedia content within multimedia systems. We first discuss in detail the nature of complexity in human interpretations of multimedia, and why we, as researchers, should look outward to the crowd, rather than inward to ourselves, to determine what users consider important about the content of images and videos. Then, we present strategies and insights from our own experience in designing tasks for crowdworkers. Our techniques are useful to researchers interested in eliciting information about the elements and aspects of multimedia that are important in the contexts in which humans use social multimedia.