Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://gijn.org/category/methodology/)
When ProPublica reporters published a questionnaire in February reaching out to women who had experienced life-threatening complications in childbirth, they only expected a few hundred responses. Instead, they received thousands — and the structured call-out became the basis of their maternal mortality series.
There is a huge amount of data available on pollution and disease caused by the Matanza River – widely known as River Riachuelo – the problem was transforming it into information that those affected could easily understand. In a special multimedia report, La Nación used open data and data visualization to illustrate the extent of the problem.
Tras cuatro años de trabajo y 8.000 sentencias judiciales procesadas, el equipo de Univisión Data reveló que en Costa Rica una persona tiene más probabilidad de ser condenada en un juicio si tiene un defensor público que si tuviese uno privado. La metodología incluyó “web scraping”, R regresión logística, un método estadístico de uso muy frecuente en las ciencias sociales pero prácticamente inexplorado por las salas de redacción.
Four years of work and 8,000 judicial rulings later, the team at Univision Data shows how in Costa Rica, a person is more likely to be convicted of a crime if they are assigned a public defense attorney than if they have a private one. Their methodology included web scraping, R and logistic regression — a statistical method common in social sciences but practically unexplored in newsrooms.
Newsrooms in Asia have traditionally worked alone, guarding their sources and tip-offs fiercely and keeping their stories and investigations in-house. However, after attending GIJN’s Asian Investigative Journalism Conferences and participating in the global Panama Papers investigation, Indonesia’s top newsweekly and leading investigative outlet Tempo have been inspired to pursue their own cross-border collaborations.
Last month, an international group of investigative journalists launched the Tax Disclosure Project – a global initiative requesting politicians in 20 countries to publicly disclose their tax returns. The project, coordinated by Finance Uncovered, aims to ensure transparency, accountability and an avoidance of wrongdoing and potential conflicts of interest among lawmakers. In this piece, Finance Uncovered co-director Nick Mathiason shares with GIJN the process of setting up this cross-border collaboration.
De Correspondent, a Dutch member-funded journalism platform, leverages on the shared knowledge and experience of their 55,000 paying members as much as possible in their reporting. Here’s their 3-step workflow incorporating reader engagement, which helped them land their scoop on Shell.
The boom of internet technology and social media networks have allowed journalists to access information which had previously been out of reach. Apps, sites and devices let ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances become reporters. However, internet research expert Paul Myers cautions that investigative journalists need to be incredibly sensitive when running stories and never expose innocent people to attack and ridicule.
Egyptian traffic cops found a mobile launcher lying in a piece of pile near the airport of Cairo. The story was quickly dismissed by Egyptian media. But others believed it. In this detective & research adventure recorded by web research specialist Henk van Ess, you’ll learn how to find the truth midst of an information war.
As the Syrian civil war has played out on the battlefields with gunshots and mortars, a parallel conflict has been fought online. In this interview, Al Jazeera’s Juliana Ruhfus details the methodology and challenges of her investigation into an “invisible” cyberwar and the process of transforming the investigation into an online game.
Transnational investigations pose a different set of additional challenges. Coordinating journalists across borders, who have different priorities, and making them work as if they were sitting in the same newsroom, is not an easy task. Here are some lessons Investigate Europe has to share based on their experience.
