The pandemic has seen film festivals around the world go virtual, including Transparency International’s Films For Transparency. Here are five of our favorites from the anti-corruption documentaries that made it onto their shortlist.
In this quick how-to article, open source researcher Youri van der Weide walks readers through how to use the free tool SunCalc to verify where a photo or video posted online was taken.
Secularism in the world’s largest democracy is threatened by a Hindu-nationalist movement that takes pages from the playbooks of authoritarian leaders around the world. In this longread, journalist Maddy Crowell shares the first-hand story of one New Delhi-based magazine that is trying to protect democracy in India when other news outlets fail to hold power to account.
In this year’s GIJN’s Editor’s Pick series, Bangla editor Miraj Chowdhury writes that, despite many free speech and coronavirus-related challenges, there are numerous examples of important journalistic investigations taking place in the region. Here are some of the stories that mattered the most in 2020 for the 215 million Bangla speakers around the world.
For those unfamiliar with GIJN’s Top 10 Data Journalism roundup, each week we select the most popular data journalism items on Twitter. We do this by using NodeXL to map use of the terms #ddj and data journalism, and then add a bit of old-fashioned human curation to highlight the most compelling items. At the end of the year, we survey the entire period and pick the best from hundreds of tweets. This year — the year of the pandemic — in which the coronavirus dominated public conversation and news headlines, our mapping reflects that reality.
For this week’s Friday 5, where GIJN rounds up journalism news in English from around the world, we’re reading about a new database of global counter influence operations, the Russian media groups taking on President Vladimir Putin, and Signal’s new group calling feature.
Journalists have used scrapers to collect data that rooted out extremist cops, tracked lobbyists, and uncovered an underground market for adopted children. The Markup recently made the case for web scraping in an amicus brief before the United States Supreme Court that threatens to make the practice illegal. Here’s why they did it.
In this year’s GIJN’s Editor’s Pick series, Africa editor Benon Herbert Oluka compiled a list of some of the top investigative stories produced and published or broadcast by media organizations based in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020.
This year, in our My Favorite Tools series, we asked 12 of the world’s top journalists what their go-to tools are. From VeraCrypt and OnionShare to Aleph and the Wayback Machine, here are GIJN’s favorites.
As part of our annual Editor’s Pick series, read on to discover the best investigations in China and Taiwan published this year, selected by GIJN Chinese Editor Joey Qi.
For this week’s Friday 5, where GIJN rounds up journalism news in English from around the world, we’re reading about the new Corruption Tracker for the international arms trade, dodgy deals in personal protective equipment procurement, and a recently launched organization to support whistleblowers legally, as well as financially.
People around the world believe the several promising COVID-19 vaccines were designed to do the two things we most want them to do: reduce severe illness and death, and reduce the spread of the disease. But a central problem, experts say, is that none of the new vaccine trials were designed to achieve either of those goals.
As the United Kingdom begins its rollout of the first COVID-19 vaccine this week, the world is watching with bated breath. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from November 30 to December 6 found Bloomberg tracking the development of nine of the most promising vaccines around the world, The New York Times creating an interactive for Americans to establish where they are in the line before they can get vaccinated, and Spain’s El Pais examining the advantages of using antigen testing for COVID-19 infections. Meanwhile, ITV News’ Stephen Hull did a fun data analysis of the assorted chocolates in a Quality Street tin.
As part of our annual Editor’s Pick series, read on to discover the best investigations in French published this year and selected by GIJN French Editor Marthe Rubio and GIJN Francophone Africa Editor Maxime Domegni.
After spending time in solitary confinement in Iran, Sarah Shourd started to explore what confinement meant in the United States and has produced a body of work about what she found in prisons around the country. Her play about confinement – “The BOX”– was broadcast over Zoom, bringing a story about the desperation of solitary confinement to audiences experiencing isolation around the world.
On October 30, the student news site of duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States, published a bombshell of an investigation: While training officers, the Kentucky State Police had used a slideshow that quoted Adolf Hitler. The reporters behind the story were a 16-year-old and his younger brother.
Are scented candles a casualty of the coronavirus crisis? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from November 23 to 29 found researcher Kate Petrova’s data analysis revealing that scented candles have suffered a blow in online reviews and a decrease in ratings, possibly linked to the coronavirus’ ability to affect people’s sense of smell. Elsewhere, Germany’s Zeit Online created a COVID-19 infection risk calculator, the COVID Tracking Project explained how holidays and weekends disrupt the recording and publishing of virus data, and Reuters analyzed the shortcomings of the coronavirus contact tracing system in England. Meanwhile, the Sigma Awards, which celebrate the world’s best data journalism, have opened for entries.
On the evening of August 4, 2020, a devastating blast at the port in Beirut shook the Lebanese capital. It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. GIJN spoke to three outlets whose investigations all played a pivotal role in understanding what led to the explosion and why a ship and its deadly cargo were stuck at the port for so long.
A November 18 press release, claiming a safe vaccine that protects 95% of people against COVID-19, by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech was greeted with excited headlines. In this article, two leading health reporters shared tips on how to read such releases and balanced cautious optimism with the provision that the release relied on interim results from a trial in an accelerated setting.
GIJN’s Spanish Editor Andrea Arzaba rounds up the top investigative stories from Latin American media outlets in 2020, focusing on deep dive investigations into important but often overlooked topics including femicide and migration.
Around the world, people are toning down their celebrations in a bid to mitigate spread of the coronavirus. The latest casualty: Thanksgiving. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from November 16 to 22 found FiveThirtyEight’s timely piece explaining the risk of COVID-19 transmission from even small Thanksgiving dinner gatherings. Also popular: The New York Times tracking the status of all vaccine trials in progress, and The Pudding analysis of race and gender in crossword puzzles from five major US news publications.
In this reboot of GIJN’s popular “Toolbox” series, we walk through the techniques journalists can use to find connections between websites using IP addresses and Google Analytics tags hidden in the source code of websites. We’ll also demonstrate how to use the powerful tool SpiderFoot HX to visualize network maps, which help journalists draw connections unseen in the offline world.
GIJN is pleased to announce four free digital events for journalists on cutting-edge online investigative techniques. They will be led by the globally-renowned data journalist, open source reporting expert and trainer, Henk van Ess. The December webinars are open to all and last for 90 minutes. The January workshops are limited to a maximum of 25 people, by application only and will last five hours.
For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke to Alberto Cairo, head of visualization at the University of Miami’s Institute for Data Science and Computing. Cairo shared several user-friendly tools and core principles to help investigative reporters shape their data visually to create new insights for audiences.
