Forensic visual investigation has rapidly become a critical method of journalistic inquiry, thanks to new technologies, innovative skills, and the global ubiquity of social media imagery.
From a film investigating the attempted murder of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny to a stark cautionary tale about how climate change is playing out on the Arctic coast, see the Oscar-nominated documentary shortlists.
One of our core missions at GIJN is providing journalists in the field with the latest tools and techniques. To do that, we work hard to find original stories that will be of immediate, practical help for watchdog reporters around the world. Here is a curated list of 10 of the notable stories we’ve published this year, reflecting our most popular articles, groundbreaking discoveries, topical issues, and stories you just shouldn’t miss.
Cutting-edge tools and techniques for digging into autocracy, climate change, health and medicine, disinformation, organized crime, and attacks on journalists headline the 12th Global Investigative Journalism Conference this November — presented by investigative reporters and forensic experts on the front lines.
The death of African American George Floyd in police custody has resulted in a major uproar against structural racism in the United States. Our NodeXL #ddj mapping from June 1 to 7 finds The New York Times examining police use of force in Minneapolis, the city in which Floyd died after being pinned down by a police officer. The Washington Post also dug into data of every fatal shooting in the US by police officers since 2015.
For our series about journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke with The New York Times’ Malachy Browne, a pioneer in the field of visual investigations. He told GIJN’s Gaelle Faure about the tools that help him recreate crime scenes, including satellite imagery, EXIF data viewers, 3D modeling, and more.
The New York Times’ Visual Investigations unit uses social media and open-source tools to create powerful video reports. Here’s how they collected virtual breadcrumbs to retrace the movements of the 15-man Saudi hit team that killed Jamal Khashoggi.
Quiztime is a Twitter game beloved by journalists and other online sleuths who play it to hone their geolocation skills. Every day, one of the quizmasters tweets a mysterious image, and participants try to figure out where in the world it was taken by examining the minutest of clues.
