How do you track cryptocurrency transactions? Brenna Smith, an undergraduate researcher at UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Investigations Lab, who specializes in investigating disinformation and the illicit use of cryptocurrencies, has created a tutorial using Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades’ bitcoin funding campaign as a case study to show you how.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 20 to 26 finds @PostGraphics’ meticulous cataloguing of all on-screen deaths in Game of Thrones, @datajournalism’s tips on covering the crime beat, @DIEZEIT’s analysis of a politically diverse European parliament, and a quick beginner’s guide to learning data visualization by @AlliTorban.
Vsquare publishes longform investigative journalism stories in English on Central Eastern Europe, focusing on the Visegrád region that includes Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
For several weeks after the Yellow Vest protest movement took off in France, most major media outlets failed to report on the violent police repression of protesters. This troubling silence was shattered by the work of David Dufresne, an independent journalist who has become the main chronicler of police violence against Yellow Vests through his ongoing project “Allô Place Beauvau.” He explains how it all started with a tweet.
Satellite imagery has become an indispensable tool in investigative journalism for fact-finding, gauging the impact of a particular situation and figuring out the exact details. Here’s a round-up of of some major stories which satellite imagery helped uncover.
The fifth edition of DIG Festival, the annual international conference that celebrates and awards the best investigative documentaries in the world, is fast approaching. The jury, chaired this year by Naomi Klein, will pick and announce the winners in Riccione, Italy during the festival, from May 30 to June 2.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 13 to 19 finds a preview snippet on sensible charts from @albertocairo’s upcoming book “How Charts Lie,” @ladatamx’s report on homicides in Mexico, @RepublikMagazin’s analysis on the changing ideologies of political parties in the European Union, and a recap of the Data Journalism UK conference by @paulbradshaw.
On November 27, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Central European Time, five separate media organizations broke similar stories on a United Nations cover-up of the murders of their own staff. It took nothing less than the “radical sharing” of information between these rival platforms to expose a global conspiracy of silence.
With just a spreadsheet, a journalist can let the software do the counting and calculating, allowing them to concentrate on the purpose and result of their inquiry. It also opens the door to understanding more advanced statistics, and the use or misuse of statistics by governments and businesses.
The documentary “Trafficked in America” investigates a labor trafficking scheme targeting Guatemalan teenagers who were smuggled into the United States and forced to work long hours at an egg farm to pay off their smuggling debts. In an interview with Journalist’s Resource, the film’s authors offer insights into the investigative reporting process and the importance of cultural competency in doing high-quality journalism.
Being struck by lightning is often used as an example of heavenly retribution because it is so unlikely. Fatalities due to lightning are statistical outliers, since most people struck by lightning survive. So what is the best way to avoid becoming one of these outliers? The following is a step-by-step set of instructions for unpacking a dataset – and being careful about the conclusions we draw.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 6 to 12 finds @SteveFranconeri’s chart chooser based on data formats instead of visualization functions, @daswasfehlt’s examination of Austrian politicians’ weak email passwords in the wake of a major data leak, @NZZ’s look at whether wolves are really a nuisance in Switzerland and @wihbey’s research into the data competence and partisanship of journalists.
A fugitive convict from the Netherlands has taunted Dutch police with provocative pictures and videos from Iran, playing a game of “catch me if you can” on Instagram. Investigative reporters from Bellingcat were able to reveal the last known location of the criminal with the help of over 60 Twitter users. Here’s how they did that.
Reporters at a regional newspaper in Bangladesh, Gramer Kagoj, heard from local villagers that a maternity allowance scheme for poor mothers was being abused by women who weren’t pregnant. With guidance from an expert, they applied statistical survey methods to interview 400 beneficiaries, and their investigation took a different turn — revealing a deeper, systemic problem.
The German nonprofit news site Correctiv wanted to cover important issues — such as property ownership in German cities — that didn’t have accessible public data. So it created CrowdNewsroom, a platform that enables it to empower readers to contribute to investigations.
If current trends continue, the old debate about whether journalists can ever be truly objective may fade away, say Mark Lee Hunter and Luk N. Van Wassenhove. Objectivity, they argue, is morphing into a radically new form.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from April 29 to May 5 finds @zeitonline mapping German migration post-reunification, @FILWD pointing out the gaps in current data visualization teaching syllabi, @AlJazeera launching its data journalism introductory guide, and @WSJ highlighting the stark divide between national and local media in the United States.
Don’t miss GIJN’s first webinar with BBC’s top online sleuth Paul Myers on May 22 at 10am EST. Myers, a favourite at GIJN’s conferences and an expert in online investigative research, will spend an hour sharing effective techniques in using Google and social media for digging up information on people of interest. And you’ll have a chance to ask him questions. Sign up now!
How often is social media used as a source in news stories? Can a decision tree algorithm generate tens of thousands of 250-word stories? And what is belief-driven data journalism? These questions were at the heart of some of the promising projects featured at the 2019 Computation + Journalism Symposium.
Reporting on extrajudicial killings — murders carried out by state actors or by non-state vigilantes with the cover of state sanction — poses specific challenges to investigative journalists. Here are tips from two extraordinary reporters working in the Philippines: Rappler’s Patricia Evangelista and Reuters’ Clare Baldwin.
In the public imagination, reporters working with whistleblowers has traditionally meant All the President’s Men-style cloak-and-dagger stealth — meetings in shadowy underground garages, potted plants turned into signals, Hal Holbrook’s whispered exhortations to “follow the money.” But today, journalists’ interactions with whistleblowers are more likely to come in Signal chats or secure drop boxes than Washington, DC garages. And that shift has changed the terms of engagement in often confusing ways.
Once one of Asia’s freest media, the Philippines’ independent news outlets are under sustained attack by President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies, ranging from legal and political assaults to harassment by armies of online trolls. Pro-Duterte columnists are now attacking the modest funding that the country’s media nonprofits receive from overseas, claiming, without evidence, that they are part of a foreign plot to oust Duterte. In this powerful rebuttal, Sheila Coronel, a co-founder of the Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism, takes on the lies and misinformation behind the campaign.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from April 22 to 28 finds an interesting breakdown of colorism in fashion by @puddingviz, a series of gorgeous maps on natural disasters and extreme weather trends in the United States by @PostGraphics, a preview of a book on the history of infographics by @srendgen, and @UpshotNYT’s recap of its best articles from the past five years.
There are no chemical formulas, no “Breaking Bad” hazmat suits, no gadgets to measure humidity and atmospheric pressure. Juan Ignacio Sixto takes us on a world tour of News Labs, spaces that are meant to foster innovation within newsrooms.
Public records sometimes say the darnedest things. One example: A declassified memo from 1977 shows that the NSA wondered if psychics could nuke cities so that they became lost in time and space (yes, like in the post-apocalyptic anime Akira). Other times, it’s what they don’t say — like when the FBI found it necessary to redact the name of Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent.
When ProPublica Illinois realized that readers had lots of questions about what goes on behind the scenes in their newsroom, its editors invited them to submit questions. They then created a regular series in which reporters take turns answering questions ranging from how anonymous sources are vetted to why journalists compete and sometimes collaborate.
A record 350 journalists gathered in Tokyo over the weekend for Japan’s third investigative journalism conference, by far that nation’s largest and most sophisticated effort to network and train investigative reporters. The conference marks an important milestone for Japan’s beleaguered watchdog press, which has been under sustained assault by powerful political interests.
