Reporter’s Notebook: How to Track Down People Who Don’t Want to Be Found
OCCRP’s research director offers up a series of tips and techniques to help reporters safely and effectively build a profile of whoever they are looking for.
Tag
online investigations
19 posts
GIJC25
The Scam Supply Chain: How to Uncover Transnational Fraud Operations
Scams now function as sprawling transnational criminal enterprises. But journalists can expose these networks by following inconsistencies, mapping operations, and collaborating across borders.
Data Journalism
How Non-Coding Journalists Can Build Web Scrapers With AI — Examples and Prompts Included
With basic web knowledge, guidance, and examples, even non-coding journalists can build a scraper with large language models.
Global Academy Webinars
GIJN Webinar: Tips and Tools for Uncovering Online Scams
In this GIJN webinar, investigative journalists from around the world will gain practical strategies and tools for tracking, verifying, and reporting on online scams. Whether you’re new to the topic or looking to deepen your expertise, this session will provide advice for impactful reporting on one of the world’s most urgent issues.
Data Journalism
Rewriting the Rules of Digital Verification: How African Investigative Journalists Are Building New Data Models
The global nonprofit WITNESS seeks to address one of the biggest data gaps in the digital verification landscape: the dependence on tools-based methods that lack local knowledge.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Tips for Turning Unreadable Text Into Evidence
Whether it’s extracting names from footage, decoding social media posts, or reading distorted text in documents, Henk van Ess explains how free digital tools can take on these investigative tasks.
Reporting Tools & Tips
Struggling to Find the Right Open Source Tool? Try Bellingcat’s New Online Investigations Toolkit
The toolkit helps reporters discover tools in categories like satellite imagery, maps, and social media, and is designed to help researchers learn how to use each tool with in-depth descriptions.
Reporting Tools & Tips Safety & Security
Investigative Tips for Safely Tracking Far-Right Extremist Chatter
Veteran journalists share tips on how to monitor online chatter among white supremacists and other far right extremists — and how to stay safe while doing so.
GIJC23 Reporting Tools & Tips
Unleashing the Power of Social Network Analysis for Investigative Journalism
Social Network Analysis (SNA) enables investigative journalists to connect the dots that can lead to groundbreaking revelations and expose deep-seated wrongdoing.
Reporting Tools & Tips
New Investigative Tools for Monitoring Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are among the most difficult sites to scrape for data across the internet. A recent session at NICAR23 unveiled several dynamic new tools — including Junkipedia, a possible CrowdTangle replacement — that can perform a wealth of social media monitoring tasks, from tracking down who is behind harmful ads to identifying conspiracy groups or influencers spreading disinformation.