Cases and Profiles
Meet the people and organisations working at the new frontiers of investigation. Read about their methods, techniques, cases and the investigative mindset that drives them.
Investigate
Access to information Data Metadata
The Depth of Your Virtual Purse: What do fintech apps know about you?
Caring for our personal data requires as much effort as managing
our finances, maybe even more. A...
Research Sound
Are You Listening? Basics of Investigating (with) Sound
This article is an introductory journey intended for anyone with
an interest in listening – yes,...
Access to information Data journalism Research
Data at First Sight: Telling the human story through numbers
Good stories are relatable. They speak to the reader. Stories that have data at the centre are no...
Investigating Visual Media Access to information Verification
Investigation is Collaboration - Audio Episode
Tactical Tech’s 'Exposing the Invisible' project hosted a 5-day
online conference to celebrate...
Access to information Conflict and Power Research Verification Data journalism
Investigative Initiatives in the Americas – Meet the “New Digitals”
The digital media-sphere has been thriving over the last few years
in the Spanish- and...
Access to information Data Research
No Disaster Is Natural: How investigating climate change adaptation could make a difference
Floods, cyclones, wildfires, etc. Climate disasters and the damage
they cause are increasingly...
Access to information Investigating Visual Media Investigative Art
Communicating with a Purpose: Investigative Storytelling
“Communicating and narrating our investigation is key, it is one of
the pillars of our work as...
Conflict and Power Access to information Verification
Investigative Commons: A new era of human rights investigation
The Investigative Commons was launched as a collaboration between
the European Center for...
Investigating Visual Media Conflict and Power Verification Video Image
The Archive as Activism: Lessons from Mnemonic and the Syrian Archive
Mnemonic, the non-profit that runs Syrian Archive, Yemeni Archive
and Sudanese Archive uses its...
Investigating Visual Media Access to information Image Metadata Satellite Imagery Verification
Getting Creative with Geolocation
Take a dive into the world of geolocation, visual analysis, and the
importance of creativity in...
Safety Conflict and Power Research
Risk Assessment Is a Mindset, Not a Checklist
Conducting investigations is risky. Unfortunately, individual
investigators rarely have...
Access to information Money and Politics Data journalism Research
An Arena for Climate Collaboration: "My climate issue is your climate issue"
“Is there a link between your local river drying up and European
policies on climate and energy?...
Access to information Investigating Visual Media Mapping Propaganda Satellite Imagery
How a Chance Collaboration Exposed Secretive Government Actions in China
This is an example that proves how, with curiosity, hard work and
an openness to collaboration,...
Access to information Safety Verification Mapping Data
“It Takes a Crowd...”: Tips and examples of using crowdsourcing to collect information
Crowdsourcing is increasingly used by journalists, activists, researchers and citizen...
Money and Politics Access to information Data journalism Mapping Research
“Stronger Together": Creating a plan for collaboration
"In an increasingly complex social, political and economic
environment, and in times of lurking...
Access to information Safety Conflict and Power Research Data
How to Build a More Diverse Newsroom, for Real
This brief article gathers tips on cross-border collaboration as
learned from Editor-in-Chief...
Access to information Conflict and Power Research
How do we know things? - The Investigator’s Dilemma and Working with Absent Evidence
“Do we know things? How do we know them? Philosophers have been
asking these questions for...
Access to information Conflict and Power Money and Politics Safety
“Killing one is easy, killing a network is impossible”: The Power of Collaboration
"Ten years ago, collaborative journalism was something unusual,
quite often weird – why to share...
Conflict and Power
Living Under Drones: The aftermath of drone attacks
A website centered around a report by Stanford/NYU, based on interviews with drone strike victims...
Investigating Visual Media
Mikel Maron: Crowdsourcing satellite imagery to document deforestation
Mikel Maron has a long history in open source, open-data and
mapping. He is a founding member of...
Money and Politics
Mapping Arms Data: A visualisation
This award-winning data visualisation from Brazil's Igarape Institute (together with the Peace...
Investigating Visual Media
Investigating Instagram: More than meets the eye
A case-study focused on gathering geo-location data from images posted on Instagram to tell...
Access to information
Busting the Viral: Fact-checking on social media
An interview with three groups and organisations working on fact checking: Africa Check, Stop...
Investigating Visual Media
Postcards from Google Earth
Nicholas Mirzoeff shows us what happens when Google Earth's and Street View's process of...
Access to information
Treasure Islands: Uncovering offshore banking and tax havens
In his book Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson attempts to challenge the preconceptions people...
Safety
No Spyware for Dictators
You can read further details on this on this website created by The Greens/EFA in the European...
Conflict and Power
Assad Debunkation
A blog is attempting to unravel two years' worth of Internet propaganda, leading to what they...
Investigating Visual Media
Satellite orbiting
Featuring a project from Quarz that visualised hundreds of active satellites orbiting the Earth...
Conflict and Power
Brown Moses: Exposing the real story behind arms in Syria
Introducing Eliot Higgins, who, having sifted daily through hundreds of YouTube videos coming out...
Money and Politics
The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)
By publishing freely-accessible, groundbreaking investigative articles in English and Russian,...
Money and Politics
The Civil Contract of Photography: A book on the power politics of the image
Author Ariella Azoulay argues that the act of photography describes the set of power relations...
Money and Politics
B'Tselem Camera Project: Palestine-Israel
Featuring a project that distributes video cameras, and provides training to Palestinians living...
Access to information
Journalist's Resource: A research database
A website providing academic reports on subjects that make the news.
James Bridle: Seamless Transitions
A project by artist James Bridle looking to recreate the ‘invisible’ spaces around the detention...
Investigating Visual Media
An Atlas of Radical Cartography
A book containing ten essays and ten maps displaying social issues ranging from globalisation to...
Conflict and Power
Measure of a Life: A documentary on drone strikes
A powerful 8-minute documentary that brings you face-to-face with survivors of one of the most...
Conflict and Power
Dirty Wars: A film exposing covert drone warfare
A film released by investigative journalist and activist Jeremy Scahill that tells the stories of...
Money and Politics
Classified Information: A review of current legislation across 15 countries & the EU
An in-depth review of security classification legislation of 15 countries, such as Germany, New...
James Bridle
A profile of James Bridle who defines himself as a writer, publisher, artist, and technologist...
Investigating Visual Media
The Art of Data Visualization: A video homage
An 8-minute video depicting the emerging art of data visualization from its early stages up to...
Conflict and Power
Breaking the Silence: Testimonies of Israeli soldiers
A website created to give a voice to Israeli soldiers who have served in the West Bank, Gaza and...
Access to information
Crowdsourcing: What it is and how it can be used
Crowdsourcing has taken many forms and been adopted in various
businesses as a profitable model....
Conflict and Power
5,000 Feet Is Best: Filming a former drone operator
A film based on an interview carried out in a Las Vegas hotel room with a former Predator drone...
Access to information
Nohomophobes
A real-time interface collecting data from Twitter and designed to track casual homophobia in our...
Conflict and Power
Naming the Dead: Data on drone strikes in Pakistan
This project builds on two years of work tracking US drone strikes in Pakistan, which found that...
Access to information
Harlo Holmes: Metadata or it Didn't Happen
An interview with digital security trainer Harlo Holmes about CameraV, e-evidence used in courts,...
Investigating Visual Media
Mapping territorial control in Syria
A young student maps out the territorial control of Iraq, Libya, and Syria as it evolves and...
Money and Politics
Walls That Speak
A 47-minute video showing the power of the visual in Beirut's public spaces, and how the graffiti...
Conflict and Power
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A drone strike visualisation
A dynamic visualisation created by California-based Pitch Interactive, charting the number of...
Investigating Visual Media
Subjective Atlas of Palestine
A collection of intimate and subjective images of life in Palestine, curated by Dutch designer...
Investigating Visual Media
Visualizing Palestine
A bank of creative data visualizations describing a factual-based narrative of Palestine and Israel.
Money and Politics
Taxodus
A web-based game created to more accurately represent the reality of tax havens today.
Access to information
The Rules.org
A decentralized movement of activists campaigning around the world against poverty.
Money and Politics
Tax Justice Network: Resources on tax evasion
An independent network that advocates against tax evasion and undertakes research and analysis on...
Safety
From Tails to Whiskers: How We Created a Secure Investigation Framework
At Tactical Tech we sometimes experiment with creating tools and software that we think are...
Money and Politics
Investigating Google's revolving door
Over the past ten years, at least 80 people have been identified to have moved jobs between...
Access to information
Regret the Error
Craig Silverman looks at the damage done by 'screw-ups' in eroding public confidence in...
Money and Politics
Finding Neverland: The story behind Peter Thiel’s secret citizenship revelation
How a journalist uncovered a surprise citizen of New Zealand: US tech tycoon Peter Thiel.
Access to information
Amnesty International on small tasks, big data and massive engagement
Milena Marin demonstrates how Amnesty International uses micro-tasking, the process of splitting...
Investigating Visual Media
Switching perspectives
An interview with Swiss artist Lea Schaffner about her focus on mass media images, how people...
Access to information
The Virtual Watchers
A project that looks critically at an online platform of 203,633 volunteers surveilling the...
Investigating Visual Media
Seeing the world through Google's eyes
An article that looks at Google's various platforms and technologies and how they capture...
Investigating Visual Media
Michael Kreil: An Honest Picture of Metadata
An interview about a series of projects based on the information and digital traces that we and...
Conflict and Power
From My Point of View
The second episode in the series, 'From My Point of View', rather thanlooking at professional...
Conflict and Power
Unseen War
Exploring the physical, moral and political invisibility of US drone warfare in Pakistan.
Access to information
Disclosures of a Hashtag
Showcasing the possibilities of using hashtags for investigations.
Conflict and Power
Working with visual evidence
An interview with Hadi Al Khatib discussing methods of gathering visual evidence from social...
Money and Politics
Hacking Social Systems: Opera calling
Carmen and Doma discuss hacking and misusing closed systems through finding ways of using systems...
Access to information
M.C. McGrath: Watching the watchers
M.C. talks about using open data to understand the intelligence sector and why he chooses to...
Conflict and Power
Corpwatch: A website publishing and aggregating investigations on corporations
CorpWatch is a non-profit project, whose aim is to expose malfeasance and to advocate for...
Investigating Visual Media
Trevor Paglen
Profile of an American visual artist and geographer who has been documenting the "state of...
Money and Politics
Rise Project: Investigating corruption in Eastern Europe
A community of journalists, hackers, designers and activists dedicated to accurately depicting...
Access to information
Automated sectarianism and pro-Saudi propaganda on Twitter
The discovery of thousands of fake twitter accounts in the Persian Gulf results in an...
Conflict and Power
The Project
Hadi Al Khatib, founding member of The Syrian Archive, discusses why it continues to be important...
Access to information
Trackography
A Tactical Tech project that aims to increase transparency about the data industry by...
Money and Politics
Jesus Robles Maloof: The power of conviction
Jesus Robles Maloof talks to us about the conviction needed to do the work he does, against a...
Conflict and Power Investigating Visual Media Data journalism Research
Drone Updates: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Monitoring the impact of drone warfare on civilians to hold powers accountable.
Investigating Visual Media
James Bridle: Abracadabra algorithms
James Bridle is a writer, artist and technologist from London currentlyliving in Athens. In this...
Access to information
!Mediengruppe Bitnik: Artfully asking questions
In this short video they talk about using art as a space for reflection and to ask questions...
Conflict and Power
Living in Messy Times
In this video Carmen and Doma talk about the environment in which they are operating in and how...
Access to information
Losing Control: Delivery for Mr. Assange
Carmen and Doma discuss why losing control is an important aspect of their work through their...
Access to information
Anonymity: Random Darknet shopper
This video looks at one of the most popular projects that Mediengruppe Bitnik has worked on with...
Access to information
James Bridle: Five Eyes
James Bridle is a writer, artist and technologist from London currentlyliving in Athens. 'Five...
Access to information
James Bridle: Seamless transitions
An interview with James Bridle in conjunction with his work "Seamless Transitions."
Access to information
James Bridle: Beyond the binary
In this video interview, James Bridle discusses the internet asa unconsciously generated tool for...
Investigating Visual Media
Ingrid Burrington: Tactical cartography
Ingrid Burrington talks about growth of Occupy movement, why she got involved, how we look at...
Access to information
M.C. McGrath: Activists and online activity
M.C. suggests tips and techniques for activists to be safer online through lessons he's learned...
Access to information
M.C. McGrath, The making of IC Watch
M.C. focuses on the processes and methodology behind making ICWATCH. He talks about the insertion...
Access to information
M.C. McGrath: Accidental leaking and other types of open data
M.C. proposes three main ways that individuals and groups can get data from governments and...
Access to information
M.C. McGrath: Using the tool
M.C. introduces the tool ICWATCH. This video focuses on how the tool can be used, what data it...
Access to information
Mari Bastashevski: From gigabytes to stories
Finding treasure troves of documents within data dumps.
Conflict and Power
Mari Bastashevski: "Enjoy the labour, never the fruits"
In this interview Mari uses the phrase "You are only entitled to the labour, not the fruits of...
Investigating Visual Media
Mari Bastashevski: Modes of operating
In this first interview with Mari, she talks about her practices and processes of her work which...
Investigating Visual Media
Mari Bastashevski: Observe the unobservable
Artist and investigator Mari Bastashevski about photography at the boundaries of secrecy.
Money and Politics
Our Currency is Information
Our currency is Information is the first episode of the documentary film series Exposing the...
Money and Politics
Brett Scott: Economic explorer
Brett explored the inner workings of the financial sector from the trading room floor, before...
Access to information
Lydia Medland: From freedom of information to genuine accountability
Lydia has worked with Spain-based Access Info for several years, working to promote a stronger...
Conflict and Power
Niccolo: Retro-engineering conflict
Niccolo Figa-Talamanca works specifically on conflict mapping, a
practice that tries to tell...
Access to information
Rahul Bhargava: How stories move
Tips on how to work with Big Data using new tools, explains why the notion of “completeness” in a...
Access to information
Smari McCarthy: Making data speak
Smari McCarthy talks about how to work with data to create knowledge from information, how when...