Featuring stories on the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, sexual abuse in the healthcare sector, and a sampling of the investigations into the Bolsonaro clan.
Censorship. Imprisonment. Threats and violence. Online harassment. Legal battles. Exile. The list of challenges facing investigative reporters in Latin America is extensive. But despite the difficulties, journalists across the region are doing incredible work and holding those in power to account with their reporting.
Rainforest Investigations Network fellow Hyury Potter used data reporting and machine learning to investigate the link between clandestine airstrips and illegal mining in the Brazilian Amazon during the past two years.
Our weekly NodeXL and human curation of the most popular data journalism stories on Twitter features an investigation into the illegal mining industry in the Amazon, an exposé about sanctioned oligarchs in the UK, a report on links between human-caused climate change and extreme weather events, and the frequency of shark attacks.
GIJN Spanish associate editor Mariel Lozada offers a behind-the-scenes look at a reporting collaboration that uncovers the vast scale of illegal mining and illicit smuggling in Venezuela’s Amazon region.
Satellite are being used by journalists to report on conflicts, climate change, refugees, forest fires, illegal mining, oil spills, deforestation, slavery and many other topics. GIJN’s resource page provides official sources for free satellite images and links to experts who can advise on finding images, using them, handling technical issues and more.
What’s the global data journalism community tweeting about this week? Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from May 7 to 13 finds @adamrpearce brilliantly illustrating the problem and causes of backed up trains along the New York subway, @Textyorgua_Eng highlights the destruction of Ukraine’s landscape due to illegal amber mining and @duc_qn analyzes which university gives you the best bang for your buck.
