Chapter Guide Resource
Investigating Digital Threats: Disinformation
This chapter covers misinformation and disinformation and tools to counter them, as well as case studies.
Resource Center
GIJN’s Resource Center is here to help journalists expand their knowledge and skills. The Center holds more than 2,000 items in 14 languages – from tip sheets and guides to instructional videos. Use the menu on the right to navigate it or the search box below to find topics you’re interested in.
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Guide Resource
Asset Disclosure
Required disclosures by public officials about their income and assets can be invaluable to investigative journalists. And information about wealth and its sources can play a vital role in uncovering corruption. Official filings are often the starting point for classic follow-the-money stories. However, disclosure laws have gaps, so the public records don’t always reveal the […]
Guide Resource
GIJN’s Updated Guide to Planespotting and Flight Tracking
Investigative journalists have long used information about airplanes to uncover corruption, follow wars, track government officials, and point out the levels of greenhouse gases emitted. GIJN has now revised and updated its reporting guide to planespotting and tracking flights around the world.
Resource Video
What Is Washington Doing in Your Country? – GIJN Masterclass
The US government engages with virtually every country in the world and in multiple ways. These can include Presidential and Congressional activity, foreign assistance, criminal investigations, public and private financial transactions, lobbying, arms sales — and much more. In this online Masterclass, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Martha Mendoza is in conversation with GIJN’s David Kaplan. Mendoza […]
Resource
Simple Tips for Verifying if a Tweet Screenshot Is Real or Fake
Shayan Sardarizadeh, a reporter who covers online misinformation for BBC Monitoring, offers several tips for verifying or debunking suspect Twitter screenshots.
Guide Resource
GIJN’s Guide to Undercover Reporting
In countries without public record transparency rules or strong source protection laws, going undercover can be one of the few tools reporters have to reveal public interest stories.
Resource Tipsheet
Tips for Optimizing Google Search in Investigations, from Online Expert Henk van Ess
At a recent GIJN online workshop, open source research expert Henk van Ess offered key tips and techniques for optimizing the use of Google search in your investigations.
Resource Video
So You Think You Can Google? – Workshop With Henk van Ess
We need to talk about Google! The world’s most popular search engine tries to please as many people as possible. But for journalists, the quality of results has rapidly declined. What is the issue and what can investigators do about it? GIJN is pleased to announce a hands-on session with search guru Henk van Ess, […]
Resource Video
How to Investigate a Billion-Dollar Corporate Fraud
Once a $30 billion global bluechip financial services and tech company, Germany’s Wirecard filed for insolvency in 2021 in what is one of the biggest corporate frauds of the modern era. The tenacious and prolonged investigative reporting by the Financial Times, helped to uncover widespread fraud, malpractice and negligence. Dan McCrum, a senior Financial Times […]
Resource
Remote Sensing and Data Tools for Environmental Investigations
This edition of the GIJN Toolbox explores global databases and remote sensing resources that reporters can use to investigate local environmental threats.
Resource
How Journalists Can Investigate on Telegram
Telegram is an invaluable research tool, helping journalists mine for information, investigate groups of people whose content is otherwise banned or limited on social media, and track protests and political movements in authoritarian countries. Here’s how to get started using it.
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10 Lessons from Bellingcat’s Logan Williams on Digital Forensic Techniques
Bellingcat’s Logan Williams, who presented a panel on digital forensic reporting labs at the 2022 International Journalism Festival 2022 in Perugia, Italy, gives his top tips for journalists interested in open source digital investigations.
Resource Video
How to Investigate Elections
The state of democracy is at its lowest point in decades. Around the world, free and fair elections face growing threats from disinformation campaigns, foreign interference, voter suppression, campaign corruption, violence, intimidation, and more. Covering elections as a political “horse race” has never been enough. This approach to campaign reporting is even more inadequate today, […]
Guide Resource
Investigating Russia and the War in Ukraine
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, GIJN has published a series of stories and tipsheets for investigative journalists covering the war.
Chapter Guide Resource
Tips for Archiving Telegram Messages on Russia-Ukraine War
With Facebook blocked and Twitter restricted, Telegram is one of the last social network applications fully accessible to internet users in Russia. Archiving Telegram reports of military engagements from on the ground in Ukraine ensures any evidence can still be used by researchers if a user deletes a post, if a channel is removed, or if an entire platform becomes inaccessible.
Guide Resource
A Guide to Fact-Checking Investigative Stories
Bulletproofing your story demands much more than getting the facts right. It requires a meticulous approach from the start in order to pass quality control.
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Investigating Cybercrime and the Dark Web
Cybercrime is any criminal activity perpetrated in a digital realm. While we often think of cybercrime as defined by “hacking,” there are many other types of crimes that are part of this world, and everything from trafficking in child pornography, to withdrawing illicit funds, to the theft of source code, falls into the category of “cyber” crimes.
Resource
Four Quick Ways to Verify Images on a Smartphone
GIJN has updated our popular step-by-step guide on verifying images to help find out whether the photo you saw on social media is the real thing. Try out some simple-to-use free tools — including TinEye, Google Reverse Image Search, Photo Sherlock, and Fake Image Detector — to check the source of a picture and whether it has been manipulated.
Chapter Guide Video Investigative Techniques Methodology Organized Crime
Guide to Investigating Wildlife Trafficking: Short version
The illegal trafficking of wild animals and plants is damaging biodiversity worldwide and spreading diseases. It’s an international story, with great opportunities for investigations in virtually every country. GIJN’s new guide encourages deep reporting about the subject with tips and tools for covering a global trade.
Resource Tipsheet
Tips for Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine in Your Next Investigation
The Internet Archive is a nonprofit library that is best known for the Wayback Machine, a staple for investigative journalists around the world. Launched 20 years ago, the Wayback Machine now archives much of the public web at the rate of more than 1 billion archived URLs per day.
Resource Tipsheet
The Forensic Methods Reporters Are Using to Reveal Attacks by Security Forces
The excessive force used against anti-racism protesters around the world, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in the US, reveals the need for more visual forensic skills in newsrooms to hold police to account. GIJN identified 12 tools and 12 methods that proved effective in several recent investigations that exposed harm done by security forces.
Guide Resource
GIJN’s Global Guide to Freedom of Information
More than 115 countries worldwide have laws that require officials to turn over public records.
Guide Resource
Land Ownership Records: So Useful, but Challenging to Find
Finding out who owns land can be tough. While property registration systems exist in almost all countries, the quality and availability of the information vary widely. World Bank experts estimate that only 30% of the world’s population has a legally registered title to their land, a widely quoted figure that Bank officials stress is a […]
Guide Resource
Tracking Ships at Sea
More than 90,000 commercial ships make up the world’s commercial fleet, their locations closely tracked and the resulting data available for free. GIJN has compiled a comprehensive list of resources to track ships (including big yachts and fishing boats). We link to four dozen valuable sources of information. At the 2023 Global Investigative Journalism Conference, […]
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Fact-Checking & Verification
Bellingcat’s Online Investigation Toolkit with resources on image and video verification, social media search, searching people, maps and satellites, and more. Updated 2023. GIJN’s Guide to Fact-Checking Investigative Stories by Nils Hanson (2021) GIJN’s Four Quick Ways to Verify Images on a Smartphone by Raymond Joseph. (2021) Making Stories Ironclad & Bulletproof Line-by-Line, by Nils […]
Resource Tipsheet
Online Research Tools
Online Research Tools and Investigative Techniques by the BBC’s ace online sleuth Paul Myers has long been a starting point for online research by GIJN readers. His website, Research Clinic, is rich in research links and “study materials.” Here’s a tipsheet about finding people online that Myers presented at a 2019 GIJN webinar. And a […]
Resource
Advanced Guide on Verifying Video Content
Verifying video materials should be a routine part of reporting, but knowing how to use the digital tools to verify fake content is just one part of the skill. The creative techniques behind video verification are even more important.