Dataharvest 2024 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference: Full Schedule

Join us for networking, learning, sharing and fun!

9:30am CEST

Check-in and Coffee

Thursday May 30, 2024 9:30am - 10:00am CEST
Media forum

10:00am CEST

Hackday (special ticket needed)

Know your way around a data set? Or need some help cleaning one? Join Hackday and get some data ready for journalism. Arena’s data expert Adriana Homolová will organise this hands-on, collaborative data exploration.

Hackday is a Dataharvest tradition, combining the talents of journalists and developers to dive into datasets and find hidden stories. In 2024, we plan to work on several different subjects – it may be EU agricultural data, European housing data, but also any other data you suggest!

A separate ticket is required to attend Hackday. If you would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a ticket, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu

Speakers

Adriana Homolova

ARENA / Follow The Money, Austria/ Slovakia

Adriana is a freelance data journalist, trainer and public spending nerd. She coordinates the data skills training track on the Dataharvest conference and investigates the European Union for Follow The Money Bureau Brussel.

Thursday May 30, 2024 10:00am - 12:00pm CEST
1.16

Investigative method, Hackday

10:00am CEST

Masterclass: Deep dive into scientific methods in journalism (Masterclass ticket needed)

A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a ticket, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu

Learn how to understand and use science in your investigative reporting in this master class with experienced science journalist Elisabetta Tola.

What you will learn:

How the scientific system works, from funding proposals to peer-reviewed papers, and how to engage with science as a source.
Where to find scientific information. Practical tips on how to access open information platforms and the resources for different disciplines, and how to access publications that are not open.
Understanding different kinds of scientific publications: original papers, preprints, meta-reviews, reports (peer review vs. unvalidated), and how to judge if a publication is credible.
How to read a scientific paper – where the important information is and what is less relevant. How to understand statistics in science.
How you can judge whether scientific information is reliable, and differentiating between scientific hypotheses and pseudo-scientific theories.
Where to find the networks and communities of practice, and how to engage with them to enable you to find expert sources, and collaborators, and to get feedback on information you’re investigating.
The principles, standards, and indicators of high-quality science communication.
How to look for bias, wrongdoing, and conflicts of interest and revolving doors in science in its relationship with other industries.
Understanding discrimination, sexism, racism, and post-colonialism in science – its history, present context, and next frontiers.

What you will walk away with:

An understanding of how to engage with science and scientists in your reporting.
References – where to find information.
List, maps, and guidance on where to find experts in different fields.
An understanding of how to judge the value of a publication and an expert.
...and much more!

Speakers

Elisabetta Tola

founder - science&data journalist, Facta

Science and data journalist, Ph.D in Microbiology.Tow-Knight fellow 2019 Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY. Chief editor at Il BO Live and presenter of Radio3Scienza at RAI Radio3.Co-founder and CEO of the science communication agency formicablu and the independent non-profi... Read More →

Thursday May 30, 2024 10:00am - 12:00pm CEST
1.14

Investigative method, Master class

10:00am CEST

Masterclass: OSINT – methods and techniques (Masterclass ticket needed)

A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass - and unfortunately, the masterclass is already sold out. If you would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a ticket, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu and we can add you to the waiting list.

In this masterclass, experienced open-source investigators and trainers Benjamin Strick and Reade Levinson are going to walk you through the tools, techniques, and creative tips to answering questions such as:

How do you search the web for relevant information for your investigations, research, and to visualize a story?
How do you verify and separate this information from being disinformation or useful information?
How do you find the location of a person based on their social media images?
How can you find out where this person has been and at what time based on their social media images?
How can you use different satellite imagery providers to verify and map a person, group, or series of events by location, time, and movement?

Make sure to have your Google Earth Pro ready!

Speakers

Ben Strick

Director of Investigations, Centre for Information Resilience

Benjamin Strick is a digital investigator with a background in law, military and technology, specialising in open source intelligence (OSINT), investigations, influence operations, data and maps. Ben is the Director of Investigations at the Centre for Information Resilience and leads... Read More →

Reade Levinson

Visuals Investigation Reporter, Reuters

Reade Levinson is a visual investigations reporter at Reuters News, based in London. She specialises in using data analysis and open source methods to break news and expose wrongdoing. She has covered the Trump administration’s immigration policies; police violence and failings... Read More →

Thursday May 30, 2024 10:00am - 12:00pm CEST
3.02

Investigative method, Master class

10:00am CEST

Masterclass: Your rights to information across borders (Masterclass ticket needed)

A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a ticket, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu

A masterclass on Right To Information (RTI)

Some call it FOI, or even “wobbing”, as a dear child gets many nicknames. Today we will call it Right To Information, as we emphasize that journalists who use this method are exercising a right closely linked with freedom of speech.
Using the right to access public information as a journalistic tool, is to expand your toolkit beyond the pen, the camera, and the computer skills. You are now using the law as a tool, and it is greatly empowering the work you can do.
Program
10:00 Introductions of participants
Introduction to RTI and cross-border use (Tarjei)

11:30 A guide to the world’s national RTI laws and how to make use of them in cross-border journalism (Tarjei)

Lunch

13:00 How to access information from the EU institutions (Staffan)
What is the legal framework? How does one approach this practically?

14:30 What’s YOUR problem?
In this session participants are invited to bring to the table an RTI related problem from their own home country or from cross-border work. Using the collective experience in the room, we try to suggest solutions. If we fail to find good solution, at least we learn more about how the law works and doesn’t work in different countries. (everyone)

1530: How to use the Aarhus Convention and GDPR as tools to obtain information from private companies (Tarjei)

What you will walk away with

An understanding of how Right to Information tools can be useful in your reporting, no matter what you’re investigating.
Knowledge of RTI laws and tools available to you across the world.
Knowledge of how to file information requests with private entities, EU, and government institutions.
Confidence in using RTI laws and navigating both the legal and human side of FOI.
Inspiration on the kinds of stories and information cross-border information requests can open up to you

Speakers

Staffan Dahllöf

Reporter, Investigative Reporting Denmark

Eager to discuss any matter related to EU-reporting, especially FOI/Wobbing-issues. Have taken part in cross border project Farmsubsidy.org, the Facebook arrests, the MEP's Project, Chlorpyrifos (the most dangerous pesticide you've never heared of), Illegal pesticide, Covid 19, Asbestos... Read More →

Tarjei Leer-Salvesen

Prosjektleder Innsyn.no, Faktisk.no

Tarjei Leer-Salvesen spent this year six months at Reuters Institute in Oxford to learn more about the differences between 136 RTI laws in the world, and how journalists can use cross-border filing for information in their investigations.As he also is a well know international working... Read More →

Thursday May 30, 2024 10:00am - 12:00pm CEST
3.05

Investigative method, Master class

12:00pm CEST

Lunch

Thursday May 30, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm CEST
Media forum

Organisational

1:00pm CEST

Hackday (special ticket needed)

Speakers

Adriana Homolova

ARENA / Follow The Money, Austria/ Slovakia

Thursday May 30, 2024 1:00pm - 5:00pm CEST
1.16

Investigative method, Hackday

1:00pm CEST

Masterclass: Deep dive into scientific methods in journalism (Masterclass ticket needed)

How the scientific system works, from funding proposals to peer-reviewed papers, and how to engage with science as a source.
Where to find scientific information. Practical tips on how to access open information platforms and the resources for different disciplines, and how to access publications that are not open.
Understanding different kinds of scientific publications: original papers, preprints, meta-reviews, reports (peer review vs. unvalidated), and how to judge if a publication is credible.
How to read a scientific paper – where the important information is and what is less relevant. How to understand statistics in science.
How you can judge whether scientific information is reliable, and differentiating between scientific hypotheses and pseudo-scientific theories.
Where to find the networks and communities of practice, and how to engage with them to enable you to find expert sources, and collaborators, and to get feedback on information you’re investigating.
The principles, standards, and indicators of high-quality science communication.
How to look for bias, wrongdoing, and conflicts of interest and revolving doors in science in its relationship with other industries.
Understanding discrimination, sexism, racism, and post-colonialism in science – its history, present context, and next frontiers.

What you will walk away with:

An understanding of how to engage with science and scientists in your reporting.
References – where to find information.
List, maps, and guidance on where to find experts in different fields.
An understanding of how to judge the value of a publication and an expert.
...and much more!

Speakers

Elisabetta Tola

founder - science&data journalist, Facta

Thursday May 30, 2024 1:00pm - 5:00pm CEST
1.14

Investigative method, Master class

1:00pm CEST

Masterclass: OSINT – methods and techniques (Masterclass ticket needed)

How do you search the web for relevant information for your investigations, research, and to visualize a story?
How do you verify and separate this information from being disinformation or useful information?
How do you find the location of a person based on their social media images?
How can you find out where this person has been and at what time based on their social media images?
How can you use different satellite imagery providers to verify and map a person, group, or series of events by location, time, and movement?

Make sure to have your Google Earth Pro ready!

Speakers

Ben Strick

Director of Investigations, Centre for Information Resilience

Reade Levinson

Visuals Investigation Reporter, Reuters

Thursday May 30, 2024 1:00pm - 5:00pm CEST
3.02

Investigative method, Master class

1:00pm CEST

Masterclass: Your rights to information across borders (Masterclass ticket needed)

A separate ticket is required to attend this masterclass. If you would like to attend but haven't yet purchased a ticket, please contact us at info@dataharvest.eu

A masterclass on Right To Information (RTI)

Some call it FOI, or even “wobbing”, as a dear child gets many nicknames. Today we will call it Right To Information, as we emphasize that journalists who use this method are exercising a right closely linked with freedom of speech.
Using the right to access public information as a journalistic tool, is to expand your toolkit beyond the pen, the camera, and the computer skills. You are now using the law as a tool, and it is greatly empowering the work you can do.

Program
10:00 Introductions of participants
Introduction to RTI and cross-border use (Tarjei)

11:30 A guide to the world’s national RTI laws and how to make use of them in cross-border journalism (Tarjei)

Lunch

13:00 How to access information from the EU institutions (Staffan)
What is the legal framework? How does one approach this practically?

14:30 What’s YOUR problem?
In this session participants are invited to bring to the table an RTI related problem from their own home country or from cross-border work. Using the collective experience in the room, we try to suggest solutions. If we fail to find good solution, at least we learn more about how the law works and doesn’t work in different countries. (everyone)

1530: How to use the Aarhus Convention and GDPR as tools to obtain information from private companies (Tarjei)

What you will walk away with

An understanding of how Right to Information tools can be useful in your reporting, no matter what you’re investigating.
Knowledge of RTI laws and tools available to you across the world.
Knowledge of how to file information requests with private entities, EU, and government institutions.
Confidence in using RTI laws and navigating both the legal and human side of FOI.
Inspiration on the kinds of stories and information cross-border information requests can open up to you

Speakers

Staffan Dahllöf

Reporter, Investigative Reporting Denmark

Tarjei Leer-Salvesen

Prosjektleder Innsyn.no, Faktisk.no

Thursday May 30, 2024 1:00pm - 5:00pm CEST
3.05

Investigative method, Master class

9:00am CEST

Check-in and Coffee

Friday May 31, 2024 9:00am - 10:00am CEST
Media forum

Organisational

10:00am CEST

Opening of the conference

Friday May 31, 2024 10:00am - 10:15am CEST
Media forum

Organisational

10:30am CEST

Networking welcome

Friday May 31, 2024 10:30am - 11:15am CEST
TBA

Networking

12:00pm CEST

Lunch

Friday May 31, 2024 12:00pm - 1:00pm CEST
TBA

Organisational

1:15pm CEST

How to verify leak data - A checklist approach

As a modern journalist or researcher, you may get your hands on leaked data or documents, possibly from a person or a company that might reveal a crime or dodgy schemes. Süddeutsche Zeitung opened a new era a few years ago when it worked on The Panama Papers. Since then, we learned a lot. Ben Heubl, an investigative journalist at SZ will share with you his insights on how journalists can be sure it's the real deal? A leaked data verification checklist for investigators.

Speakers

Ben Heubl

Investigative Journalist

Munich-based investigative journalist at Süddeutsche Zeitung, data/stats nerd, who worked previously at the Economist and the FT, OSINT enthusiast.

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 1:15pm CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

Investigative method, Presentation

1:15pm CEST

Learn programming: Python basics

In this session, you will learn the basic concepts of the Python programming language. Participants will find out how to obtain and analyse data. To attend this session, no prior knowledge is required, but if bringing your own laptop, please install Python and Anaconda first.

Speakers

Luc Martinon

Data Scientist, working for Le Monde and on the eurosfordocs.eu project

Alina Yanchur

Data and Investigative Journalist, Belarusian Investigative Center

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:15pm CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

1:15pm CEST

Exploring AI: Investigating datasets to better understand AI

LAION-5B is a dataset with 5.8 billion image and text pairs—too large to make sense of. It is an open-source foundation dataset that trains AI models such as Stable Diffusion. In collaboration with the Knowing Machines Project at New York University, Der SPIEGEL and Paper Trail Media investigated this dataset, which is meant to give machines a comprehensive representation of the world to build a vocabulary of things and concepts.
In this talk, Christo Buschek traces the construction of the dataset to better understand its contents, implications, and entanglements. He will show the curatorial mechanisms chosen to construct the dataset and how those mechanisms propagate biases of other machine learning models and datasets and structural biases of the AI field itself.
Investments in AI systems are in the trillions, and those systems are deployed at a neck-break speed. To be able to investigate the datasets behind them is an essential tool for journalists to holistically interrogate AI systems—the data, the models, and the emerging effects of AI.

Speakers

Christo Buschek

Investigative Data Journalist, Der SPIEGEL/Paper Trail Media

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
Aula 0.10

AI/Algorithms, Presentation

1:15pm CEST

Media freedom at risk: Can the EU protect us?

In many EU countries the freedom of the media is under threat. Governments turn public TV, radio and news agencies into their propaganda instruments. Investors buy media companies in order to spread the narratives of the extreme right. Security authorities abuse their power to spy on journalists and reveal their sources.
To counter this threat, the EU commission has launched the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), which has recently been adopted after a long power struggle in the Council and the European Parliament.
But does the law actually give us the instruments needed to defend media freedom against the growing threat?
Can it be used to stop the assaults of the Italian, Greek or Slovakian governments against the plurality in the public media?
Does it limit the right of investors to force the media workers to promote the ideology of the owner?
Does it actually protect us and our sources against the surveillance of the security agencies?
Are there risks with a EU-wide media law bypassing or superseding national legislation?

Speakers

Staffan Dahllöf

Reporter, Investigative Reporting Denmark

Harald Schumann

Journalist, Investigate Europe

Journalist since 1983 with- „tageszeitung“ (2 years),- „Der Spiegel“ (18 years) -- "Tagesspiegel" (since 2004) and Investigate Europe (since 2016)My main interest is to help to overcome the narrow minded national perspective in reporting about European affairs and issues... Read More →

Lucie Sykorova

journalist, European Centre for Press and Media Freedom

Local journalism, media freedom, crossborder journalism, investigative journalism

Maciej Styczen

Policy Officer, European Commission

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
3.09

Cross-border, Panel

1:15pm CEST

Who funds Europe's political parties? We have the data

Who is funding political parties? What influence do they get in return? Follow the Money has built the first-ever database - along with a user-friendly dashboard - containing all the available data on donations to the political parties of the EU-27 from 2019-23. The database also includes other sources of income for political parties (mainly state aid), allowing comparison of the ratio between public and private funding across countries. We hope this new database will give you an unique insight into political funders and their intent. A group of investigative journalists is now diving into the data. Join us for the session, and find out how you can also find stories in the data!

Speakers

Jesse Pinster

Adriana Homolova

ARENA / Follow The Money, Austria/ Slovakia

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
1.14

Cross-border, Panel

1:15pm CEST

Ah Mapbox, here we go again! How to make Mapbox work with large datasets

If you have ever seen a huge Mapbox map but don't know how it was made, this session will solve the mystery. You will learn how to upload big files to Mapbox, by optimizing the files, using geoJSONs and avoiding uploading files through Mapbox Studio.
We will be using the command line to convert geospatial files to geoJSON, dropping and changing all those little bits of data that make vectors heavier and heavier. We will use a couple of Mapbox own libraries (also in the command line) to add the final details and to upload the information to their servers.
After attending this session, participants will be able to understand how Mapbox works and how to upload bigger files to it. Previous experience with Mapbox is recommended. You should be comfortable using the command line. If you are bringing your own computer you will need to install WSL or similar with an Ubuntu distribution. You will need to set up a (free) Mapbox account before the session. (https://account.mapbox.com/auth/signup/)

Speakers

Ana Ruiz

Data Journalist, El Confidencial

Data journalist at the Spanish paper El Confidencial. You will most likely find me doing some sort of map or finding out how to do one.

Krisztián Szabó

data journalist, Átlátszó, ATLO

I'm a data journalist from Budapest, Hungary at atlatszo.hu, an online investigative news site. I am most experienced using Flourish.studio as I use it on a day to day basis for my work. I also use Google Sheets for making databases/creating databases for live charts and maps. More... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
2.10

Data skills, Hands-on

1:15pm CEST

Are school test results correlated with family income? Working on relational statistics in Excel

This session is intended to move your spreadsheet journalism up a notch. Participants will be introduced to statistical concepts, and how to prove or disprove whether two variables correlate. We will be using linear regression to show how to verify whether school test results and family income are correlated. Participants will be able to work in the context of their own country to understand the dynamics between family income and pupils' test scores, and learn how to report these results in plain language. We want to appetite for correlations and equip them with vital statistical concepts, and ways to do it without coding. The participants should be comfortable running basic Excel functions and be comfortable to work in a spreadsheet. They should NOT have very advanced statistical knowledge.

Speakers

Crina Boros

Investigative Reporter | Data Journalism Visiting Lecturer

A data-driven watchdog reporter based in London, I've also been training data journalism across the map. An IRE member and offspring of the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), I've published with Reuters, the BBC, ICIJ, openDemocracy, Greenpeace Unearthed, Euobserver, The Black... Read More →

Rob Gebeloff

Reporter, New York Times

Robert Gebeloff has worked as a data projects reporter for The New York Times since 2008 and has taught data journalism for many years in newsrooms and at conferences. He was co-winner of the George Polk Award in 2015 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in both 2015 and 2016 for projects... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

1:15pm CEST

Crack the Treasure Trove – Strategic Use of FOI Requests in Cross-Border Investigations

In this panel, investigative journalists will share their experiences of using FOI requests in cross-border investigations. They will explain the outstanding opportunities that strategic use of FOI requests in several EU countries can offer. Participants will learn about the challenges involved. The panelists will also share successes and failures from their day-to-day work. We will pay special attention to the practicalities of asking for information/documents in a cross-border setting - who makes the requests in a cross-border research and when? How does one keep track of a large number of requests in different countries, and what can one do when an authority refuses to release documents?

Speakers

Nico Schmidt

Investigate Europe

As part of the European journalist team Investigate Europe, Nico Schmidt works together with colleagues from several EU countries. In recent months, he has researched the unequal availability of essential medicines in the EU, the role of AI in the EU election campaign and how Western... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
3.04

FOI, Panel

1:15pm CEST

Investigating the past - lessons from the Nazi era

We all understand that the way history is being told depends on who takes the lead in recounting the events. As investigative journalists, we usually research topics from the present or recent past: but what if we used our investigative skills to research historical topics? How can we know what really happened? In this session, you will learn how to investigate people and events from the past. Astrid Viciano will share her experience of researching the era of national socialism, and the race for the first nuclear weapon in Europe. She will explain how best to interview witnesses several decades after the events; how to find original archive material; and how to identify dubious sources. Join her for a hands-on session on how to bring history to life, in all its shades and nuances

Speakers

Astrid Viciano

Science Reporter, Medical Doctor

Astrid Viciano is a Spanish/German journalist and MD who has worked as a staff reporter at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, and stern in Germany. Today, she is the editor-in-chief of the German Health News Review (medien-doktor.de), and works as a freelance reporter, mostly in cross-border... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
1.16

Instant inspiration, Presentation

1:15pm CEST

How to find people with minimal clues

Tracking down elusive individuals is the bread and butter of OSINT work, but what can you do when armed only with a single photo or username? In this session, we’ll walk you through examples of how we cracked some of the most difficult cases (eg, tracking down an Iranian fugitive in the U.S. or the father of a posh Ukrainian living in Italy). We will unveil the power of combining image recognition, social media sleuthing, advanced Google searches, and exploring leaked data. You will discover some new techniques, and creative ways of thinking to raise your investigative game.

Speakers

Karina Shedrofsky

Head of Research, OCCRP

Based in Amsterdam, Karina Shedrofsky joined OCCRP in 2017 as a daily news reporter and became head of research in 2019. She now co-leads OCCRP’s research and data team alongside Chief Data Editor Jan Strozyk, and helps journalists in our global network track down people, companies... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
1.13

Investigative method, Hands-on

1:15pm CEST

PerencoFiles : How to investigate an unlisted company in open source

When it comes to financial investigations into multinationals, a journalist’s first point of entry tends to be stock market filings, in which firms detail their accounts and activities. But where can you start when the company on your radar is private? Where to look when it actually left the stock market, precisely to keep out of the limelight? Unless you’re lucky enough to have a leak, it can be a tricky business. That’s the dilema Investigate Europe faced when digging into the affairs of Perenco, Europe’s largest independent oil producer.

As part of its #perencofiles project, Investigate Europe and its media partners started the first large scale investigation about this secretive oil behemoth, suspected of corruption and environmental damage. Faced with Perenco’s complete secrecy and complex corporate structures, we had to use a variety of sources and tools to find leads, data and information. In this session, we will share some of the sources and approaches we used during our investigation. We will explain which databased can give you access to a trove of litigation documents; what registries to use; how to use information on companies' business partners to learn more about their joint venture and which regulatory institutions or watchdogs linked to the business area of the group you investigate you should learn about. We also hope to exchange with the audience and learn about other useful databases, sources and/or methods people have used when investigating unlisted companies.

Speakers

Leïla Minano

Investigate Europe/Disclose/Youpress

Leïla Miñano is an investigative reporter member of Investigate Europe, Disclose and Youpress. She is specialized in documenting human right violations by armed forces. She has written three books, including “La Guerre Invisible”, about sexual violence in the French military... Read More →

Maxence Peigné

Reporter, Investigate Europe

I am Investigate Europe's news reporter in charge of following, updating and furthering our previous investigations. I've worked on Covid vaccines negotiations, the Energy Charter Treaty modernisation, Europe's love affair with gas, disinformation and more.Prior to joining IE, I worked... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
3.02

Investigative method, Presentation

1:15pm CEST

Researching the lobbyists: who is shaping the future of EU policy-making?

2024 is major transition year for the EU institutions. A new European Parliament will be elected in June and a new European Commission team will start work at the end of the year. The summer and autumn will be peak time for lobbying to influence both Parliament and Commission, and the future direction of EU policies. What kind of corporate lobbying can we expect, and on what issues? Participants will be introduced to the most useful tools for investigating lobbying influence in Brussels.

Speakers

Olivier Hoedeman

Research and Campaign Coordinator, Corporate Europe Observatory

Olivier Hoedeman is research and campaign coordinator at Corporate Europe Observatory - exposing the power of corporate lobbying in the EU.

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
3.05

Investigative method, Presentation

1:15pm CEST

Fullstack Journalism - Let's build an Independent Media Tech Alliance

NETWORKING SESSION: Choosing the right tech tool stack for your newsroom is often a nightmare. It costs time, effort, and in some instances requires tech knowledge that especially small and new newsrooms struggle to find.
Then there is the matter of price, data privacy, security and portability - not to mention usability. Very often, the choices require a trade-off between a newsroom’s values and practical considerations in order to have a functioning solution. How can we collaboratively address these challenges?
A group of eight independent newsrooms has come together to build Fullstack Journalism: an alliance aiming to create a lasting platform and space for public-interest media to resolve their tech challenges, co-create solutions, unleash more tech and product capacity in small newsrooms, and build tech partnerships.
In our session, we will tell you more about the values and planned activities of Fullstack Journalism, and we invite you to join us for an interactive session to discuss our tech challenges and further shape the alliance to best suit your needs.

Speakers

Julia Hildebrand

Project Lead, Correctiv

Julia Hildebrand is leading the privacy-first software and community project beabee at CORRECTIV. beabee aims toempower more people across Europe to start and run local, independent, community-driven and membership-financed newsrooms in order to bring more diversity to our local information... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
Media room

Networking, Roundtable

1:15pm CEST

Mental health at risk - How to mitigate the burden for journalists and newsrooms by peer support

As reporters and editors, we are constantly confronted with a lot of negativity in our daily work routines. Not only because of the topics we cover but also because of hate speech or even physical violence we experience on duty. While only major news organisations provide psychological support structures, many smaller newsrooms and especially freelance journalists struggle to cope with the resulting mental health challenges (e.g. anxiety, moral injury, depression etc.).

Aside from individual care and how to built-up resilience, we particularly want to introduce the concept of peer support as an easy solution for our industry which is facing the risk of mass burn-out and other mental health related dropouts. Support schemes like the German "Helpline" believe that a journalist knows best what a journalist is going through on a tough assignment, during a shift at the photo desk after a mass shooting, or on a pressing deadline. Often, we don't need a clinical psychologist (sometimes we do!) but someone to talk to, who listens and who can relate to our problems - like a fellow journalist.

If you want to take care of yourself AND learn how be a supportive colleague as well as easily set up a support scheme for affected colleagues, this is the right session for you.

Speakers

Malte Werner

Projektleiter "Helpline", Netzwerk Recherche

Hat als Agenturjournalist gelernt, Dinge auf den Punkt zu bringen. Als freier Reporter entdeckte er dann seine Liebe für die lange Form und stellte gleichzeitig fest, dass dieser Art von (freiem) Journalismus kein tragfähiges Geschäftsmodell zugrunde liegt. Bei Netzwerk Recherche... Read More →

Friederike Engst

Psychological Psychotherapist, Dart Centre Europe

Friederike Engst is a psychological psychotherapist (CBT, trauma therapy/EMDR), behavior and communication trainer and has been giving seminars and workshops for a wide range of groups since 2005. After professional positions in science and in prevention in the area of work and health... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 1:15pm - 2:30pm CEST
2.02

Safety, Presentation

2:15pm CEST

Coffee break

Friday May 31, 2024 2:15pm - 2:45pm CEST
TBA

Organisational

3:00pm CEST

Lightning Talks

This is a session made up of 5- 5-minute standalone talks on subjects, tips or tools that need only 5 minutes of presentation or explanation. More information to follow!

Moderators

Jonathan Stoneman

Lead trainer, Arena for Journalism in Europe

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

Cross-border, Roundtable

3:00pm CEST

Predator Files: How European companies supplied dictators cyber-surveillance tools for more than a decade

During the last decade the Western world has encouraged and applauded the digital tools that empower democracy activism in countries under authoritarian regimes. But at the same time European companies have supplied such authoritarian regimes the digital back doors to turn any digital device into powerful spying tools against dissenters.

Predator Files reveals that European companies have been funding and selling cyber-surveillance tools to dictators for more than a decade with the passive complicity of many European governments. The preliminary peak of surveillance excesses was most recently reached by the Intellexa Alliance - an association of several European companies through which Predator software was supplied to authoritarian states. Activists, journalists and academics have been targeted, as have European and U.S. officials.

This year long investigation run by 15 media and coordinated by European Investigative Collaborations is based on hundreds of confidential documents obtained by Mediapart and Der Spiegel, analysed with the help of the Security Lab of Amnesty International. More than 90 stories have been published in 12 languages, including reports by watchdogs such as Amnesty and Frag den Staat. In this session, we will look back at some of those stories and look into methodologies and approaches used in our work.

Speakers

Thodoris Chondrogiannos

Reporter, Reporters United

Thodoris Chondrogiannos is an investigative reporter and member of Reporters United, a center for investigative journalism in Greece. He graduated from the Athens Law School in 2015, but then he decided to become a journalist. He has worked for Greek and international media. He speaks... Read More →

Daniel Dolev

Nicola Naber

Investigative Reporter, DER SPIEGEL

Works for DER SPIEGEL in Hamburg since 2006. Focused on white collar crime. Working in cross-border collaborations since 2016, especially with European Investigative Collaborations.

Yann Philippin

Journalist, Mediapart

Journaliste à Mediapart. J'aime le soleil et les paradis fiscaux. Membre de l'équipe #FootballLeaks. Co-auteur du livre Dassault Système.

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
3.02

Cross-border, Panel

3:00pm CEST

The true story: how I screwed up and then fixed my cross-border investigation

"Oh, shit, I just screwed it up!" We all have been there, the moment when we realise we just made a mistake, maybe a big one. And when that happens as part of our work in a cross-border investigation, the stakes may be high and we may feel as if we put the whole collaboration in danger. But, then, we talk to our colleagues, we think about what happened and how we can solve the problem, we work together, and most often we find a solution.

There are other times when we don't realise it but our colleagues tell us that we made a mistake. And, of course, other people make mistakes too. But, thankfully, in most cases we are able to fix the situation and continue working as a team.

As more and more of us gain experience in cross-border investigations, this is a great moment to come together and learn from our mistakes as journalists, team members and coordinators: why they happened, how we solved them, how to prevent them in the future, how to work better together.

In this session, we'll be frank about our own fuck-ups, and then we'll also discuss mistakes other people made. Not naming names or with the aim of embarrassing anyone, but to share the lessons learnt and so that we all can get better at collaborating in investigations. Come and join the discussion -- and bring your own mistakes to share too!

Moderators

Jose Miguel Calatayud

Freelance journalist and writer

I am a freelance journalist and writer based in Berlin, focusing on feature writing and investigative journalism, mainly about Europe. I am now working on a series of articles on how corporations act very strategically to achieve political influence in the EU. And until mid-2024... Read More →

Speakers

Stéphane Horel

Journalist, Le Monde

Stéphane Horel is an investigative journalist at Le Monde. Author of several documentaries and books, she specialises in corporate harm, toxic industries and scientific disinformation, as well as in innovative investigation methodologies. In 2023, she supervised the European map... Read More →

Sotiris Sideris

Data Editor, Reporters United, CCIJ

Sotiris Sideris is a data journalist, trainer, and project manager with extensive cross-border and collaborative experience.He is the data editor of Reporters United and the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), and co-founder of AthensLive. He also serves as a... Read More →

Jelena Ćosić

Training Manager and Eastern European partnership coordinator, ICIJ

Jelena Cosic is ICIJ's training manager and Eastern European partnership coordinator.She prepares and implements training programs on ICIJ platforms, new materials, and documentation, both internally and across the organization’s global reporting network.Prior to joining ICIJ, she... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
3.09

Cross-border, Panel

3:00pm CEST

Finding fires using Python&Satellite

In this session we will look at how to locate fires around the world using NASA's open source dataset (VIIRS - Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) and how this information can be used to generate stories. Participants will need a Google account in order to access the tutorial.

Speakers

Tom Brown

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
1.16

Data journalism, Presentation

3:00pm CEST

Beyond Boundaries: Create a custom map in Flourish

Have you ever wanted to make a map of some specific area, such as your town? If you're a journalist without any coding experience or access to a developer, then this hands-on session is perfect for you. We'll cover the fundamentals of GeoJSON files, where to find them, and how to utilize them in Flourish. After attending this session, the participants will be able to create their own visually-engaging custom maps in Flourish and visualise data for their local or cross-border investigation in no time. To attend this session, no prior knowledge is required, but familiarity with Flourish is a bonus.

Speakers

Federico Acosta Rainis

Data Specialist, Pulitzer Center

Federico Acosta Rainis is a data specialist at the Pulitzer Center's Environment Investigations Unit. Previously an IT consultant, he transitioned into journalism a decade ago, working with La Nación in Argentina, where he has contributed to award-winning projects. Federico received... Read More →

Teodora Ćurčić

investigative journalist & multimedia producer, Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS)

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

3:00pm CEST

Distrust your Data

Nine times out of ten (like many other numbers, this statistic is made up) when something in data looks newsworthy there is actually a quite mundane explanation. That headline grabbing outlier is probably a typo, this sudden downturn is caused by a change of measuring method. A thousand fold increase of something? Double check whether someone has misplaced a decimal point. This presentation is about the ‘missing link’ between finding a data source and publishing a story. With practical examples- no programming needed - we will discuss common pitfalls in interpreting numbers and strategies to bulletproof your data analysis. After attending this session participants will be able to look more critically at data, having practiced sifting through the fool’s gold and getting to the real story Some experience of spreadsheets is desirable but not required.

Speakers

Serena Frijters

Eric Barret

Data Desk Manager, OCCRP

Based in Tbilisi, Georgia, Eric Barrett joined OCCRP in 2019 and is the data desk manager. He works with OCCRP journalists and member centers leveraging data to support investigations that shine a light on corruption. Previously, he directed Georgia’s first data non-profit, JumpStart... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

3:00pm CEST

Mastering SQL Basics: Moving Beyond Spreadsheets for Large Datasets

Take the next step after dealing with spreadsheets, and learn how to handle large datasets with SQL. Using SQL makes it possible to handle large amounts of data, to safely share data with others, and most importantly, to combine tables together by joining. In this session you will learn the basic understanding of SQL - sorting, filtering and counting. By attending these sessions the participants will be able to understand when to take the step from Excel to databases and SQL, and how to use SQL to join datasets together in order to find new information. To attend this session the participants should have basic knowledge of working with spreadsheets. All the software necessary will be pre-installed on the school computers. Participants who want to bring their own laptop will need: DB Browser SQLite which can be downloaded from https://sqlitebrowser.org/ for PCs and Macs.

Speakers

Helena Bengtsson

Data Journalism Editor, Gota Media

Helena Bengtsson is Data Journalism Editor at Gota Media, a regional publishing company in the south of Sweden with 14 local titles. She previously worked as Editor for Data Journalism at Sveriges Television, Sweden’s national television broadcaster for 27 years and she also served... Read More →

Crina Boros

Investigative Reporter | Data Journalism Visiting Lecturer

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
2.10

Data skills, Hands-on

3:00pm CEST

How to turn the public value of independent media into financial value

What are the biggest challenges for independent newsrooms today? Which business models and revenue streams work? Where is deep community engagement financially viable? And how can the sector be supported to become more sustainable? In this session we present the first public findings of the Journalism Value Survey, the most in-depth survey of the state of independent media in Europe to-date. This project is a collaboration between Netzwerk Recherche and Reference, a network of European independent public interest media. We aim to support independent media in Europe to become more sustainable through research and conversations, and pioneering collaborative knowledge exchange within Reference. Join us to learn about the state of the independent newsrooms, and get an insight into the state of European independent journalism today.

Moderators

Lucas Batt

Coordinator, Reference, Arena for Journalism in Europe

I'm part of a small team coordinating Reference, an exciting new network for European independent media. My role focuses in particular on community building and facilitating knowledge exchange, with the aim of strengthening network connections and accelerating collective learning... Read More →

Speakers

Peter Matjašič

Executive Director, Investigate Europe

I'm originally from Slovenia and live in Barcelona. I have a background in Political Science/International Relations and have dedicated most of my adult life to activism and civil society engagement. After 12 years of youth work and youth representation (President of the European... Read More →

Zoltán Sipos

Editor-in-Chief, Átlátszó Erdély

Zoltán SIPOS is the manager and editor-in-chief of Átlátszó Erdély (atlatszo.ro), an investigative journalism outlet focusing on issues regarding the 1,2 million Hungarian community living in Transylvania, Romania... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
3.04

Entrepreneurial, Panel

3:00pm CEST

Googling for nerds

How many times a day do you go to a search engine? And how often is it Google? This session will point at less-known features of the search giant as well as less-reflected shortcomings of the tool that most journalists use every day.

Speakers

Marcus Lindemann

managing editor, autoren(werk) GmbH & Co.KG

Marcus Lindemann is the managing author of autoren(werk) and has been producing magazine pieces and documentaries for ARD and ZDF with his own company since 2000, mainly on consumer topics, often with hidden cameras. After the series "WISO ermittelt" and "oma trick", autoren(werk... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
1.13

Investigative method, Presentation

3:00pm CEST

Network Analysis for Telegram Channels

In this session, we will show you how to work with the Telegram API to gather data from Telegram channels and, turn it into a text/network analysis of what people talked about. We will show how we scrape Russia-related channels used by military/media groups for our work at OCCRP and visualize them in Gephi.

Speakers

Oksana Stavniichuk

Investigative Data Developer, OCCRP

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
Aula 0.10

Investigative method, Hands-on

3:00pm CEST

Using Wikipedia correctly

Wikipedia is a monopoly - not as unpleasant as Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon, because Wikipedia is not a profit-driven company. But it is a monopoly nonetheless, as other encyclopaedias are no longer on the market. Wikipedia is also being misused. Most users only read the articles on it without reflecting on the fact that although Wikipedia authors remain anonymous, they do have their own interests. The "free encyclopaedia" is regularly the target of PR campaigns and information warfare. Add to this the fact that Wikipedia is being used too much: it is one of the leading online media outlets, without this weakness being sufficiently known or highlighted. Meanwhile - Wikipedia is also used too little! It is a very useful research tool that can be far superior to search engines, depending, of course, on the research questions and the skills of the researcher. It is the only major research tool that works semantically rather than algorithmically. In this session, we will examine Wikipedia's weaknesses and its strengths as a research tool.

Speakers

Albrecht Ude

journalist, researcher, trainer, freelancing

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
3.05

Investigative method, Presentation

3:00pm CEST

Arena Food and Water Network - informal networking meeting

Arena's Food and Water Network has over 130 members on Signal, regularly sharing tips, questions, ideas, and opportunities. This open session is a chance for anyone inside the Food & Water Network or interested in joining to get together in person. As this network is currently unfunded, and any ideas or initiatives will be followed up by the participants themselves. But we want to create time and space for those in the network to meet and come up with their own ideas for what should happen next.

Speakers

Hazel Sheffield

Coordinator, Arena for Journalism

Hazel Sheffield is a British journalist reporting on all aspects of business and economics, from US fund managers attempting to crack China to community co-operatives in the British countryside. She is a coordinator for Arena for Journalism, where she leads the Academy, developing... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
Media room

Networking, Roundtable

3:00pm CEST

Video journalling: powerful tool for video investigative reporting (on a shoestring budget)

How can you do documentary work as an investigative journalist without big budgets and when your time is limited? In this session, we will look into video journaling as a something from which journalists could benefit. Video journaling can be used when reporting on crises such as environmental and natural disasters or war. It also has a wide range of applications in other situations when journalists cannot do field reporting, or when you don't have the access, but your subject does (eg. family situations, medical institutions etc.) It is also suitable for small newsrooms with limited budgets and documentary-making knowledge, but applies to big productions and experienced professionals too. In this session, we will share tips and tricks on how and when to make best use of video journalling.

Speakers

Dina Đorđević

deputy editor-in-chief and journalist, Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS)

Dina is a deputy editor-in-chief at CINS and has been an investigative journalist for many years. She mostly covers topics related to ecology and contributes to multimedia production of CINS with the production of short videos. She was a 2023 fellow at The Oxford Climate Journalism... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 3:00pm - 4:15pm CEST
2.03

Storytelling, Presentation

4:00pm CEST

Coffee break

Friday May 31, 2024 4:00pm - 4:30pm CEST
TBA

Organisational

4:45pm CEST

Brain waste: Investigating the scale and the cost of structural discrimination in Europe

Brain waste is Lighthouse Reports' major data investigation of the last year. It reveals the scale, location, and cost of structural discrimination immigrants face in Europe’s labor markets. It’s also a data detective story. We worked out where the data was, persuaded Eurostat to accredit us as a research organization to get sensitive microdata of millions of Europeans (a first for a journalism org), and ran extensive statistical analysis to ensure the robustness of our findings. In this session, we will share our findings, workflow and explain how we've done it.

Speakers

Tessa Pang

Impact Producer, Lighthouse Reports

Tessa Pang is an Impact Producer at Lighthouse Reports. She works to ensure Lighthouse’s findings are strategically placed to create tangible change on the issues they investigate. She predominantly focuses on issues of power imbalance within the world's food systems, but also works... Read More →

Justin-Casimir Braun

Data Reporter, Lighthouse Reports, Germany

Justin is a data journalist focused on the societal impact of automated systems and artificial intelligence. In the past, Justin has worked with AlgorithmWatch e.V., a German digital rights organization, and various grassroots NGOs, documenting human rights violations against migrants... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

Cross-border, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

Can you trust your MEP? Learn how to investigate EU officials

Just one week after the Dataharvest conference, hundreds of millions of citizens across the EU will go to to the polls to elect the next EU Parliament. But what do we know about the integrity of the sitting MEPs, and those now running for one of the 705 seats? How well does the Parliament enforce rules that are supposed to prevent misconduct, such as the Qatargate scandal that erupted in late 2022? In recent months journalists from all over the EU have looked into these questions, as part of the EU Misconduct Investigation, and in separate investigative efforts. In this session, they will present their findings and methodologies, and help you find out how to investigate MEPs from your home country.

Speakers

Hans-Martin Tillack

Chefreporter Investigation, Welt

Hans-Martin Tillack is a senior reporter in the investigative team of "Welt" and "Welt am Sonntag" in Berlin. Until March 2021, he was responsible for investigations in the Berlin office of "Stern" magazine. From 1999 to 2004, he was the EU correspondent for "Stern" in Brussels. Tillack... Read More →

Adriana Homolova

ARENA / Follow The Money, Austria/ Slovakia

Lise Witteman

investigative journalist EU-topics, Follow the Money

Team lead of the EU desk of investigative journalism platform Follow the Money (ftm.nl/ftm.eu).Our Brussels based team specialises in (data driven) investigations into EU affairs, such as the Recovery Files investigation.In the run up to the European elections of 2024 we have some... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
3.02

Cross-border, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

AI-assisted journalism - case studies from the Guardian

The current wave of AI hype is centred on Large Language Models (LLMs).
Are LLMs useful for investigative and data journalism? At the Guardian our conclusion is that they are - but only for tasks that are more easily checked than done. LLMs in their current form are not reliable, all their work must be checked, so this a win only if the checking is easier than doing the work yourself.
We will look at examples of real Guardian stories which were LLM-assisted - with varying degrees of success.

Moderators

Jonathan Stoneman

Lead trainer, Arena for Journalism in Europe

Speakers

Carmen Aguilar Garcia

The Guardian

Carmen Aguilar García is an award-winning journalist, currently part of The Guardian Data Project team. Before joining the Guardian, she was the first data journalist at Sky News, working on a wide range of topics to find data stories, and covering the Covid pandemic.Carmen also worked as a TV reporter and a multimedia journalist in Chile and Spain before jumping into the world... Read More →

Joseph Smith

Staff Software Engineer, The Guardian

Joseph Smith is the engineering lead of the Guardian's Generative AI team, which is exploring how this new technology might be safely used for journalism. Before that, he spent four years working on investigative and data journalism projects at the Guardian and building software... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
Aula 0.10

Data journalism, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

Fossil Fuel Detectives

This session will give participants a whistle-stop tour of the best available tools and platforms for journalists exploring the opaque global trade in fossil fuels. Using examples from Data Desk’s own research published with the likes of Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and The Washington Post, Sam Leon will show how you can use customs data, ship-tracking platforms, and free satellite imagery to power your stories on fossil fuels.
What you will need: A laptop, internet connection, web browser, and either a Google Drive account to access Google Sheets or a copy of Microsoft Excel. Prior knowledge: Basic knowledge of spreadsheets.

Speakers

Sam Leon

Data Desk

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
3.05

Data journalism, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

Right Under Your Nose: How to Find Data Stories in Open Sources

Can one really create an engaging data story without major data leaks, complex programming skills, or access to confidential sources? Of course!. Potentially big stories are right under our noses. Sometimes all it takes is data from Eurostat, the EU Commission, or a non-profit organization. Combining these sources can lead to unexpected discoveries. In this session, we will share several experiences in which we used easily accessible data to work on stories taking place in a non-transparent regimes such as Lukashenko's in Belarus, and others related to opaque EU regulations.
You don't need any data journalism experience for this session. You can come even if you are just starting to be interested in this area. If you want to participate in research, bring a laptop.

Speakers

Alina Yanchur

Data and Investigative Journalist, Belarusian Investigative Center

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
1.14

Data journalism, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

Exploring AI: Extracting named entities with LLM

This workshop is suitable for those who want to automate the work of extracting information from an array of texts. You will learn how to use the OpenAI API to extract named entities (names, city names, streets, numbers, emails, etc.). We will also compare the results of OpenAI with free Python libraries for processing human language. Participants in this session will get acquainted with the capabilities of OpenAL and Python libraries for extracting named entities. In the future, this will simplify and speed up your work with text data. The participants of the master class must have at least basic Python programming skills. They should also be interested in exploring the possibilities of extracting named entities from texts. If you are bringing your own computers to the session, you should have Python installed (from 3.8 version), Jupyter Notebook installed, and a registered account on Open AI platform https://platform.openai.com/

Speakers

Alesya Marohovskaya

The Head of the Data Department, Investigative and Data Reporter, IStories

Investigative and data reports at Important Stories (www.istories.media). You can contact Alesya by mail alesya.marohovskaya@istories.media.Awards:The Sigma Awards 2022 (Important Stories)Winner of the European Press Prize 2021 in the investigation category (Important Stories)The... Read More →

Misha Gagrin

Researcher, OCCRP

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

4:45pm CEST

Mastering SQL for Large Datasets: Joining Tables

Take the next step after dealing with spreadsheets, and learn how to handle large datasets with SQL. Using SQL makes it possible to handle large amounts of data, to safely share data with others, and most importantly, to combine tables together by joining. In this session you will learn how to join tables to find data that exists in both tables or use joining to add information into a table. By attending these sessions the participants will be able to understand when to take the step from Excel to databases and SQL, and how to use SQL to join datasets together in order to find new information. To attend this session the participants should have basic knowledge of working with spreadsheets. All the software necessary will be pre-installed on the school computers. Participants who want to bring their own laptop will need: DB Browser SQLite which can be downloaded from https://sqlitebrowser.org/ for PCs and Macs.

Speakers

Helena Bengtsson

Data Journalism Editor, Gota Media

Crina Boros

Investigative Reporter | Data Journalism Visiting Lecturer

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
2.10

Data skills, Hands-on

4:45pm CEST

Tracking changes with GitHub Actions

Have you ever come across something online that later gets changed? Sometimes the changes can be more interesting than the data itself. Wikipedia lets you see all the additions, removals, and modifications that have ever been made to an article. What if we could do something similar for any webpage? Using GitHub Actions, we can. GitHub is a site for sharing and collaborating on code, as well as keeping track of how it is being revised. A few years ago GitHub launched Actions, which lets you run that code on their servers according to a schedule. So we can set up a scraper to run on a schedule and then see how the output changes over time.Participants will leave with an understanding of how to set up GitHub Actions to run a simple scraper regularly, and then do some basic analysis on the output, including identifying changes over time. No prior knowledge is required, however you will need to have a GitHub account. Sign up before the session if you don't already have one: https://github.com/signup

Speakers

Max Harlow

Financial Times

Max Harlow works on the visual and data journalism team at the Financial Times, focusing on investigations. He also runs Journocoders, a group for journalists to develop technical skills for use in their reporting.

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

4:45pm CEST

Rethinking the newsroom without a hierarchy

Newsrooms are usually hierarchical places: you have an editor who tells you if you can do a story or not, and you have a CEO who ultimately decides the strategic direction. Often there will be layers between you and the decision maker. What if that wasn't the case? How would you decide your organisational strategy without a CEO? How do you pitch stories without an editor? How does anything get done without someone to say yes or no?! In this session, we will share some of the approaches to being non-hierarchical self-organising media organisations. We will look at various approaches, what we think works well, what the challenges are, and ultimately what we think is the best way to run an organisation. We'd like to make sure the discussion is participatory, so please join us to share and discuss your experiences of non-hierarchical structures, whether in the workplace or outside.

Speakers

Will Franklin

Lead Developer, beabee

Ricardo Ribero

Fumaca

I'm a co-founder and journalist at Fumaça, an investigative journalism podcast focused on injustices and inequalities. We mainly create serialized audio-documentaries. In the past, through sometimes years-long investigations, we have covered the private security sector, European... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
3.09

Entrepreneurial, Panel

4:45pm CEST

For sale: you. A simple method to expose online data breaches

Online pharmacies inadvertently share their clients' data with Facebook; so do an online doctor, and a mental health helpline forum, banks and many more sites. Swedish Radio reporters created a fake pharmacy to show that Facebook stored sensitive information about people’s health and sex lives. In this session reporter, Sascha Granberg, will show you the tools you need to carry out similar investigations in your own country.

Speakers

Sascha Granberg

Data Journalist, Independent

Sascha Granberg built the data team at Sveriges Radio. He is currently working as a freelance investigative journalist specalised in data-driven methods. His work has been nominated for The Swedish Grand Prize of Journalism (2022, 2021), Guldspaden (2022, 2021) and Sigma Awards... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
1.16

Instant inspiration, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

Dealing with vulnerable sources

How do you work with vulnerable sources - people traumatised by war, by having to flee, by facing mortal dangers for themselves and their families? Few journalistic tasks are as important and as ethically and personally challenging as the coverage of migration, modern slavery, and exploitation. Too often, survivors are seen only as victims, when they are actually the key witnesses to major events that are not properly documented in the paper trails that journalists are accustomed to working with. In this session, two experts from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma will talk about creating a safe environment, building trust while respecting boundaries, including one’s own, and minimising the risk of causing additional harm.

Speakers

Gavin Rees

Senior Advisor for Training and Innovation, DART Center

Gavin Rees is Senior Advisor for Training and Innovation at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Since 2008 he has been working as a trauma awareness consultant and trainer for newsrooms, media-support organisations, and journalism schools across Europe as well as internati... Read More →

Friederike Engst

Psychological Psychotherapist, Dart Centre Europe

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
2.03

Investigative method, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

Investigations from above: How to use satellite imagery for investigative journalism

Satellite images play a critical role in today’s investigative reporting. Journalists use satellite images to report on hard-to-reach or dangerous places, cover conflict zones, map floods or droughts, and document war crimes. Satellite imagery can also provide valuable geospatial data for analysing fires and other environmental stories. Our speakers will discuss finding and vetting satellite imagery and will walk through step-by-step examples of how imagery has been used to great effect in investigations.

Speakers

Ben Strick

Director of Investigations, Centre for Information Resilience

Reade Levinson

Visuals Investigation Reporter, Reuters

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
Aula 1.13

Investigative method, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

Local data stories with a European perspective - Network meeting with CORRECTIV.Europe

CORRECTIV.Europe uses data to show how global phenomena have a local impact. We do that in collaboration with our Europe-wide network of media professionals. In doing so, CORRECTIV.Europe not only highlights the complexity and relevance of topics from local journalism but, above all, makes in-depth, cross-border journalism possible in the (stressful) daily business of local newsrooms. In addition to joint investigations, the network offers plenty of space for dialogue and conversation: from discussions about cross-border collaborations in the network to general topics such as hurdles in our branch and everyday working life. And all of it is free of charge! This session will consist of two parts:
In the short first part, CORRECTIV-Europe team members will look behind the scenes of the CORRECTIV.Europe project and show how cooperation in the network work. And how you would benefit from joining. In the second part of the session, there will be plenty of time for general questions to address any concerns about how local reporting with international relevance can find its way into everyday editorial work and, of course, to network. Are you already part of the CORRECTIV.Europe network? If so, meet other members face to face, without a webcam.

Speakers

Olaya Argüeso Pérez

Chefredakteurin, CORRECTIV – Recherchen für die Gesellschaft

Olaya Argüeso Pérez ist Chefredakteurin von CORRECTIV sowie Leiterin des Projektes CORRECTIV.Europe. Sie berichtete zehn Jahre lang über Wirtschaft und Finanzen beim wichtigsten spanischen Radionetzwerk Cadena SER. Im Lede Program der Columbia University in New York entdeckte ... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
Media room

Networking

4:45pm CEST

Has the Anglo approach colonised journalism?

The so-called “Anglo-Saxon” style of writing news has been enormously influential on journalism worldwide, but there are many other journalistic cultures and traditions in the world. What is lost and what is gained when the Anglo approach is adopted in different national newsrooms? What compromises do non-native-English speaking journalists make — with their readers or themselves — when they write in English? Do news organizations in the Western world need to rethink their assumptions about style to adapt to a changing world? What is important to maintain from the Anglo approach and what can be changed? In this panel, we will discuss these issues and more with editors from international newsrooms who grapple with these questions every day.

Speakers

Alessia Cerantola

Chris Matthews

Website Editor, Investigate Europe

Chris Matthews is the website editor of Investigate Europe, a cross-border investigative journalism consortium. Previously, he worked on climate investigations for an environmental nonprofit, with a particular focus on commodity-driven deforestation and global supply chains. He reported... Read More →

Ruona J. Meyer

Researcher and Media Trainer

Ruona Meyer is Nigeria's first Emmy-nominated investigative journalist, a researcher, trainer with over 20 years of experience across Africa and Europe. She is currently a final-year PhD candidate, researching power dynamics within cross-continental investigative journalism networks... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 4:45pm - 6:00pm CEST
3.04

Storytelling, Panel

6:30pm CEST

Dataharvest Ultimate Quiz and Game Night

There’s nothing quite like cross-border collaboration. At the Dataharvest Ultimate Quiz and Game Night, put your knowledge to the test by teaming up with colleagues from across Europe for a chance to win the Golden Calculator at our pub-style quiz. Drinks will be provided. Festivities will be led by quizmasters Constanze and Max.

Speakers

Max Donheiser

Data Journalist, CORRECTIV

Investigative data journalist in Berlin with a focus on inequality and climate.

Constanze Bayer

Data Journalist, BR Data

Constanze arbeitet als Datenjournalistin mit an Geschichten rund um Klima und Umwelt. Das können große Storytelling-Projekte wie ein CO2-Rechner sein, der die Wirkung von Heizungsgesetz und Co illustriert, aber auch Geschichten über die Finanzierung der Klima-Entwicklungshilfe... Read More →

Friday May 31, 2024 6:30pm - 7:45pm CEST
Media forum

Networking, Hands-on

9:00am CEST

Coffee

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:00am - 9:30am CEST
TBA

Organisational

9:30am CEST

Exploring AI: Tapping around the blackbox: How to investigate Tech's impact on society

Investigating "black-box algorithms" can yield fascinating stories when you have access to the system's source code, and statisticians on hand to help you make sense of it all. But what if you don't?
We will share our experience of investigating Big Tech and automated systems with minimum resources and look at questions such as:
- Finding the role of tech in any story,
- Learning about a piece of software without having access to it,
- Assessing the social impact of a technical system,
- Pitching stories that editors don't know where to put (is it Tech or Society?)
Participants will learn how to find a tech angle in stories that seem to have no relation with technology. And vice versa. They will receive tips and learn how to find human and social perspectives in an issue that, at first sight, may seem too technical for the general public.

Moderators

Nicolas Kayser-Bril

Reporter, AlgorithmWatch

Nicolas Kayser-Bril is a French-German journalist and developer. At AlgorithmWatch, he keeps track of automated decision-making in the European Union. Before that, he was the head of Journalism++, an agency for data journalism that won the European Press Prize in 2015.

Speakers

Sara Kezia Heinonen

Fellow, AlgorithmWatch

Pablo Jiménez Arandia

Journalist / Investigative reporter, Freelance

I am an independent journalist specialized in the social and political impact of technology. I have done several investigations on the use of AI and algorithms in the public and private sector, in which I've worked with Lighthouse Reports, the American author Virginia Eubanks, and... Read More →

Mathilde Saliou

freelancer, Algorithm Watch

As a French journalist specializing in digital issues, I study the effects of technology on society and how the latter shapes ongoing innovations for specialized and general media. I have worked with the Guardian and Algorithm Watch, Slate France, 20 Minutes, etc. I wrote "Technoféminisme... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

AI/Algorithms, Presentation

9:30am CEST

How a Swiss company spied across Europe on behalf of the UAE state

Abu Dhabi Secrets investigation has revealed that the Swiss private intelligence company Alp Services was contracted by the UAE government to spy on citizens of 18 countries, in Europe and beyond. Alp Services has sent to the UAE intelligence services the names of more than 1 000 individuals and 400 organizations in 18 European countries, labeling them as part of the Muslim Brotherhood network in Europe. How to do such an investigation across borders in five weeks, producing almost 50 stories in 9 languages? How did newsrooms deal with investigations involving the actions of other journalists?

Speakers

Kasper Goethals

Reporter, De Standaard

I'm an international reporter for the Belgian newspaper De Standaard. I work for the feature desk of the weekend magazine, working on reportages, features and investigations. I am also a co-founder of The Caravan's Journal, a small cross-border collective of European journalists covering... Read More →

Yann Philippin

Journalist, Mediapart

Journaliste à Mediapart. J'aime le soleil et les paradis fiscaux. Membre de l'équipe #FootballLeaks. Co-auteur du livre Dassault Système.

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
3.02

Cross-border, Presentation

9:30am CEST

How to use European air pollution data to hold companies accountable

The European Industrial Emissions Portal is a trove of information for anyone interested in knowing who are the largest industrial polluters in their city or region. In this session, participants will learn what this database contains, what stories can be developed from it, and some of its shortcomings. This session is suitable for attendees with basic data journalism skills. No coding skills are required.

Speakers

Olaya Argüeso Pérez

Chefredakteurin, CORRECTIV – Recherchen für die Gesellschaft

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
1.16

Data journalism, Presentation

9:30am CEST

Geo-Investigations: Using QGIS to Investigate Environmental Impacts

This is a hands-on introduction to using QGIS as for investigative journalism. We will cover various QGIS functions including calculating an area deforestation, checking whether a mine is encroaching on indigenous land, or illegal activities are taking place in regulated areas. Participants will learn how to open, visualize and manipulate various types of geographical data, We will use case studies of real examples of environmental research conducted in the Congo Basin, the Amazon and Southeast Asia. By the end of this session, attendees will be equipped with the basic skills to start using QGIS, integrating geospatial data analysis into their investigative toolkit. No prior knowledge is required, but you should install QGIS on your laptops and make sure it works. Download from: https://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html

Speakers

Federico Acosta Rainis

Data Specialist, Pulitzer Center

Kuang Keng Kuek Ser

Data Editor, Pulitzer Center

Kuek Ser Kuang Keng is the data editor for the Pulitzer Center, where he supports investigative journalists of the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN) and Ocean Reporting Network (ORN) to achieve their investigation goals. Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Keng is a digital journalist... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

9:30am CEST

Learn programming: Getting started with R

Excel and Googlesheets can only get you so far - once you start learning a scripting language like R, you begin to see how point and click software holds you back. Not to mention really big datasets which R handles with ease, while the familiar tools crash! By the end of this session, you will know how to import your data into R, how the interface works, and how to ask your data questions. You may already know your way around spreadsheets, but even if you're not, R is an amazingly flexible language for analysing data. We will get you started up the learning curve - you will be amazed what is possible. We will be using a cloud version of RStudio, so no installation necessary. The session material will be available to you after Dataharvest too.

Speakers

Jonathan Stoneman

Lead trainer, Arena for Journalism in Europe

Luuk Sengers

Journalist & trainer, Story-Based Inquiry Associates / De Groene Amsterdammer

Luuk is an independent investigative journalist, lecturer, trainer and mentor. For the leading Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer he writes about the effects of corporate power on our environment and climate, based on data-analysis. He also teaches research skills, data journalism and interview techniques to professionals and students and helps media and NGOs organise and carry out investigative projects. He... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

9:30am CEST

Using SQL To Query For Anomalies/Deviations in Georgia Trade Data

Imagine looking through millions of rows of import/export data to find categories of items that have changed suddenly, perhaps because of a conflict, sanctions, or for other reasons. You need SQL, and we will be exploring some more advanced concepts that can help spot the data which has changed suddenly. Participants will leave with a better understanding of when SQL outshines spreadsheets for analysis, and the power of window functions to compare row-level data with aggregation, such as sums, averages, and standard deviation. You will should also walk away with greater date processing skills in SQL. This is intermediate level SQL - familiarity with basic SQL concepts, such as GROUP BY, is required, though we will briefly review it If bringing your own laptop, you will need a SQL client that is compatible with a Sqlite database.

Speakers

Eric Barret

Data Desk Manager, OCCRP

Luc Martinon

Data Scientist, working for Le Monde and on the eurosfordocs.eu project

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
2.10

Data skills, Hands-on

9:30am CEST

Finding the needle in the haystack: How to investigate companies with OSINT data?

Modern data search techniques online can reveal who controls companies, who finances them, and those who don't want anyone to know. Who earns the money is often the first and most important question? Who owns a business? Who's responsible for crimes committed by a dodgy business operation? Who signs off sanction-breaching deals? Who avoids paying taxes with the opaque company structures that cost the taxpayer gazillions? Well, who...? These are often the central questions for journalists and financial crime investigators of our times. Sometimes the answers are obvious; sometimes, they aren't. And that's often intentional. Money launderers, corrupt posliticians and business people like playing in secret. What we can do as online forensic investigators? We use the open, deep, dark web, un-indexed online registries and data from social media profiles. You need some method amid the madness. This presentation offers you a checklist approach for researching a company.

Speakers

Ben Heubl

Investigative Journalist

Munich-based investigative journalist at Süddeutsche Zeitung, data/stats nerd, who worked previously at the Economist and the FT, OSINT enthusiast.

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
Aula 0.10

Investigative method, Presentation

9:30am CEST

How to track industry bias on research

Companies in the medical, food, tobacco, and environmental sectors spend billions funding persons and organisations in research, education, and medical practice. They thereby introduce bias and distort priorities, practices, and results. How do we investigate this topic? We will discuss different approaches, including story angles, data sources, and methods. Hristio will draw from his extensive experience on the subject as a freelance investigative reporter at The BMJ, as well as the leader of the award-winning long-term data investigation project, Follow the Grant.
The attendees will walk away from the session with an understanding of the importance of commercial influence on science, education, and medicine, relevant story ideas and ways to investigate them, as well as possible pitfalls. The session will be followed by a data buffet on the topic.

Speakers

Hristio Boytchev

Science and health reporter, Berlin

Hristio Boytchev ist Wissenschafts- und Medizinjournalist mit Fokus auf datengetriebene und investigative Recherchen. Für seine journalistische Arbeit wurde er etwa 2012 mit dem Arthur-F.-Burns-Fellowship und 2021 mit dem Hofschneider Recherchepreis und als „European Science J... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
3.04

Investigative method, Presentation

9:30am CEST

Investigating NGOs 101

On Friday, 9 December, the Belgian police raided offices in the European Parliament. Seasoned MEPs including Eva Kaili and Pier-Antonion Panzeri were suspected of intereference and corruption. At the heart of the scandal was Panzeri's Brussels-based NGO 'Fight Impunity'. Scandals like this are a reminder that as well as investigating the governments and multinationals, we journalists should take a closer look at NGOs, and their influence within European institutions. In this session, you will learn how Follow the Money did their investigation and get an introduction to different tools, websites, and databases so that you can find similar stories, in the EU and beyond. This session will also be the place to discus how we can investigate, and better understand the influence of NGOs through their finances and connections.

Speakers

Salsabil Fayed

Journalist, Follow the Money

Bitten by numbers. In a previous life, I was a financial analyst. In 2022, I decided to devote myself entirely to my passion: journalism. I draws inspiration from journalists like David Barboza, who exposed corruption at the highest levels of the Chinese government. He showed me that... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
3.05

Investigative method, Presentation

9:30am CEST

Discover the Datashare-to-be, the Offshore Leaks Database's new API and other ICIJ new tools - Network meeting with ICIJ

Come meet ICIJ and discover Datashare's new design, ICIJ's free and powerful document-search software. Using lots of new features, you'll be able to browse your documents in a split view, run advanced searches, add notes, create folders, search for similar documents, customize your whole interface, export graphs from your own dataset and run time-saving batch searches. Come and share your feedback with the team! We will also showcase the first API prototype of ICIJ's Offshore Leaks Database. The team will explain how to use the database to run searches and connect the dots for your investigations. Come by also if you want to meet with some of ICIJ's reporters and chat about project ideas or potential collaboration. We look forward to seeing you at the event!

Speakers

Bruno Thomas

Soline Ledésert

Product Owner of Datashare, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Product owner of Datashare, free open-source document-analysis software developed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Scilla Alecci

Reporter, Coordinator for EU & Asia, ICIJ

Scilla Alecci is an investigative reporter and video journalist for ICIJ. She is also partnership coordinator for Asia and Europe.

Maxime VANZA LUTONDA

Developer, ICIJ

Developer working at ICIJ, mainly working on Datashare

Miguel Fiandor

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
Media room

Networking, Presentation

9:30am CEST

Digital self-defence - 11 steps to your secure computer

How do you protect your own computer and data from attacks? An antivirus programme is no longer enough: computer viruses still arrive in your inbox as email attachments, but you can also import malicious code by simply clicking on a website. In many cases, users do not even realise that their own computer is being misused, and remotely controlled via the Internet. This workshop will explain how to increase your own computer security, simply and effectively. Bring your own device to this session, and we will help you change your settings in order to make your set up more secure. Please back up your device before attending the session.

Speakers

Albrecht Ude

journalist, researcher, trainer, freelancing

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
2.02

Safety, Hands-on

9:30am CEST

Tackling online hate and smear campaigns: self-dox yourself

Online hate campaigns are often used to try to silence journalists. What can you do to prevent them – and how can you combat them? In this session you will learn how to put your journalistic skills to work to combat the scourge of online harassment, and build a step-by-step guide to react to online hate. We will identify vulnerabilities in your digital footprint that are often weaponised by trolls; assess the potential impact of attacks on reporters; and discuss the best approach to combat attacks, even with limited resources. You will learn to conduct a self-doxing exercise: put yourself in the attackers’ shoes, and learn the techniques and tools they use to gather personal information about their target. You will also learn how to analyse the type of online violence directed at you, giving you the power to decide on the best course of action.

Speakers

Javier Luque

Head of Digital Communications, IPI

Javier Luque is the Head of Digital Communications for the International Press Institute, where he coordinates advocacy and communication on IPI’s digital platforms. He has worked on online hate against journalists and media organisations since 2014. His research on this topic has... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
2.03

Safety, Hands-on

9:30am CEST

How to translate a very technical EU story into an impact-investigation accessible for everyone

Many audiences don't care about the EU affairs. So how do you make them excited on the topics that are usually interesting only for the EU bubble? A collaboration between an EU-expert journalist and and a mainstream investigative reporter could be a good way to start. But it is not always easy and frictionless. Sometimes, these two categories of journalists don’t speak the same language, don’t have the same relation with sources, and usually they don’t adress the same audience.
In this panel, we will share some tips to help you make this type of collaborations smoothers, and more common in all Europe. We will talk about wording, local references, and different strategies; we will talk about difficulties and challenges in this work. And we will show you how an article written for the “EU bubble” and the "mainstream audience" can stay the same - and yet be so different!

Moderators

Jose Miguel Calatayud

Freelance journalist and writer

Speakers

Pascal Hansens

Leïla Minano

Investigate Europe/Disclose/Youpress

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
1.14

Storytelling, Presentation

10:45am CEST

Coffee break

Saturday June 1, 2024 10:45am - 11:15am CEST
TBA

Organisational

11:15am CEST

How to track planes online (and fast)

Tracking planes is essential to some of OCCRP's stories. In this session, you will learn about the different resources that you can tap into to investigate planes and we will showcase three real-world examples that involve Prigozhin's private jet, a bird on a plane and a helicopter at a medieval fortress.

Speakers

Misha Gagrin

Researcher, OCCRP

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 11:30am CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

Investigative method, Hands-on

11:15am CEST

Exploring AI: Ethical AI - How to investigate algorithms

Despite the increasing deployment of risk assessment algorithms, journalists have struggled to access and test these systems. In March 2023, a team of journalists managed to access the source code, machine learning model file, and training data of a machine learning welfare fraud algorithm deployed in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. This access enabled them to execute an experiment to test for bias and discrimination.

This hands-on, in-person workshop will have participants work directly with the Rotterdam algorithm in order to learn how to develop and test hypotheses on risk assessment algorithms. Unlike additive models, more complex non-linear ML models like those used in Rotterdam can create unpredictable effects that make them difficult to test. We have built a frontend app for the Rotterdam model that allows participants to test it without writing any code.

This workshop will have the following structure:
-How to investigate the full lifecycle of an algorithm (training data, model type, performance, fairness) and the questions you can ask with differing levels of technical access.
-How to develop a data-driven hypothesis for a non-linear machine learning model
-Executing hypothesis on frontend app and interpreting results.

Speakers

Justin-Casimir Braun

Data Reporter, Lighthouse Reports, Germany

Gabriel Geiger

Investigative Journalist, Lighthouse Reports

Gabriel is an investigative journalist with Lighthouse Reports. He specializes in surveillance and algorithmic accountability reporting and most recently was the lead reporter on Lighthouse Reports' Suspicion Machines investigation. His work often combines traditional reporting methodologies... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
Aula 0.10

AI/Algorithms, Hands-on

11:15am CEST

Cyprus Confidential: Unmasking sanction evaders

In 2023, ICIJ, Paper Trail Media and 67 media partners published Cyprus Confidential, which exposed how Cyprus firms provided services to help key backers of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime shelter their wealth and then, as Russia invaded Ukraine, hide billions of dollars in assets from the threat of sanctions. ICIJ analyzed millions of documents to identify nearly 800 companies and trusts owned or controlled by sanctioned Russians. In this session, we will share how we unmasked powerful Russians and their assets in the Cyprus Confidential project. We'll explain our methodology, and explore the difficulties of working on sanctions-related investigations.

Speakers

Anuška Delić

founder, Oštro

Based in Slovenia, Anuška Delić is an investigative reporter and founder of Oštro, a non-profit center for investigative journalism in the Adriatic region. In 2021, Oštro established a sister center in Zagreb, Croatia, effectively creating a unique two-headed micro-regional entity... Read More →

Delphine Reuter

Head of data and research, ICIJ

Delphine Reuter is the head of the data & research team at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. She started collaborating with ICIJ on the LuxLeaks project in 2014. She worked for several years as a researcher for environmental organizations, has taught at conferences... Read More →

Maria Retter

Paper Trail Media

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
3.02

Cross-border, Presentation

11:15am CEST

How the bad guys think: Decoding the Disinformation Playbook

For the past 18 months, the International Press Institute has been working with investigative journalists at Taz in Germany and fact-checkers at Faktograf in Croatia to decode populist propaganda in Europe targeting fact-checkers and investigative journalists, both essential players in the fight against disinformation. In this session, we turn their investigations on their head to show you how it's done from the bad actors’ point of view. Buckle up for a disturbing ride across the disinformation bubble in Spain and Hungary.

Speakers

Jean-Philipp Baeck

Reporter, taz, die tageszeitung

Deputy Head of Investigative Unit at Taz, expert on right-wing scene in Germany, disinformation, IT security and anti-Semitism.

Javier Luque

Head of Digital Communications, IPI

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
1.16

Cross-border, Presentation

11:15am CEST

Looking in The Mirror: How to Navigate Power Dynamics within Cross-border Teams

Cross-border journalists typically collaborate to hold power to account. But collaborative teams also exhibit power as they produce investigations across countries, continents and cultures. When power is breached, trust can be lost, ethics can be compromised and harm may occur. In this session, we explain the various types of power within cross-border investigative teams and discuss strategies for recognising, avoiding and correcting power imbalances. Attendees can expect a hands-on, practice-based session where they are encouraged to choose which power dynamics are prioritised, decide which strategies should be discussed further by the panellists, and participate in an open discussion.

Moderators

Hazel Sheffield

Coordinator, Arena for Journalism

Speakers

Ruona J. Meyer

Researcher and Media Trainer

Marcos García Rey

Investigative journalist

Marcos García Rey is an award-winning investigative reporter and editor, journalism trainer, and a PhD. candidate.Since 2010, he has participated in more than 20 cross-border investigations, 13 of them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including the... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
3.04

Cross-border, Panel

11:15am CEST

Using data journalism for local stories: what have we learnt?

Over the last few years, various initiatives have been supporting local journalists in a range of countries to take their first steps in data (and investigative) journalism. All of them have a common methodology: one team searches, cleans and prepares data on a specific subject, and makes the data available to local journalists who can use them to tell stories in their area. What have these teams learned from working with local journalists? And how do local journalists value these projects?

Speakers

Olaya Argüeso Pérez

Chefredakteurin, CORRECTIV – Recherchen für die Gesellschaft

Helena Bengtsson

Data Journalism Editor, Gota Media

Pete Sherlock

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
1.14

Cross-border, Panel

11:15am CEST

Data wrangling with R

One of R's biggest strengths is its flexibility in cleaning and tidying data. Some of R's tools will save you many hours of copying and pasting within a spreadsheet. Some of them are simply impossible with Excel/Googlesheets. This session will show you how to explore and "wrangle" your data. By the end of the session you will know how to reshape datasets to make them easier to analyse This year we are making the 3 R sessions "self-standing" - so if you know some R already, you can join R2 or R3 withouth attending R1 We will be using a cloud version of RStudio accessible through a browser. No installation necessary. The lesson materials will be available after Dataharvest

Speakers

Jonathan Stoneman

Lead trainer, Arena for Journalism in Europe

Luuk Sengers

Journalist & trainer, Story-Based Inquiry Associates / De Groene Amsterdammer

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

11:15am CEST

Scraping the unscrapable: advanced approaches to deal with complex sites and evade anti-scraping systems

Scraped data can often be the backbone of an investigation, but some websites are more difficult to scrape than others. This could be because of the sheer volume of data you need, or the way the site is built - either accidentally or deliberately making it hard to scrape. This session will cover best practices for dealing with tricky sites, including coping with captchas, using proxy and other scraping services, and best ways to scale up your scraping by using the cloud. This is an advanced session aimed at people who already have experience of writing code to scrape websites and want to move up to the next level: participants will leave with an understanding of how to approach hard-to-scrape websites, plus the tradeoffs and costs.

Speakers

Max Harlow

Financial Times

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
2.10

Data skills, Hands-on

11:15am CEST

The art of scrollytelling - dynamic map-based storytelling for all

During this course, participants will learn about the basics of scrollytelling: structure, usage, best cases. Scrollytelling articles are popular and win awards. Of these, the most popular feature a dynamic map, which helps tell a story with geographical data. This session aims to make this process easy to learn. By the end of the session, all participants will have an understanding of the structure of Mapbox-based scrollytelling wireframe, with basic animations and interactivity. Participants should have a basic understanding of HTML structure; know what a geojson file is, and love maps. You will need a Mapbox profile (free registration); code editor of choice (eg Sublime Text), and possibly QGIS (might not be used)

Speakers

Krisztián Szabó

data journalist, Átlátszó, ATLO

Rui Barros

data journalist, Público

Portuguese data journalist currently working at Público. In a relationship with R, loves to build things on the web. The solo coder in his newsroom, dreaming about the day where he’ll be just one more on a data team, so he doesn't have to debug his code alone.

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

11:15am CEST

The EU is quiet-quitting Freedom of Information. What can we do about it?

For more than two decades, journalists have been able to rely on the European Union's freedom of information law to gain access to documents on lawmaking, public spending and lobbying. Since 2009, the EU has even enshrined access to documents in its Charter of Fundamental Rights. This has allowed investigations into issues such as the EU's climate policy, lobbying by big tech companies, and human rights abuses at Europe's external borders. But transparency is not what is once was.Under President Ursula von der Leyen's European Commission, journalists requesting information have faced long delays. Meanwhile, EU member states have shrouded major projects in secrecy - including the €723 billion Recovery and Resilience Facility. The European Commission has also refused access to text messages in which von der Leyen brokered the EU's multi-billion euro vaccine deal with Pfizer. Our panellists will discuss recent legal challenges against EU institutions, such as the New York Times' lawsuit over the Pfizer texts. We will also discuss strategies that journalists can to overcome obstacles to the right of access to documents, and explore, along with the participants, different possibilities for collective action.

Speakers

Alexander Fanta

Follow the Money

Alexander Fanta is an investigative journalist with Follow the Money. His focus is on tech companies and their lobbying in the European Union. Alexander is an FOI practioner and member of the International Advisory Board of Access Info Europe.

Jean Comte

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
3.09

FOI, Panel

11:15am CEST

How (and why) to investigate freezing of assets in the EU (without leaks)

European freezing of asset orders have been increasingly used since the so-called 2011 "Arab Spring" up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These sanctions can target companies, states and individuals alike - but how exactly do they work? And how can one assess how they have been implemented across the EU ? This session will explain how to make use of open company records and registries to investigate freezing orders. We will base this session on the examples from the investigations such as the #EscapeProject coordinated by CiFAR (Civil Forum for Asset Recovery) and the EIC (European Investigative Collaborations) and supported by IJ4EU, and researches into the Mubarak and Ben Ali clans assets in Europe, but the methodologies you will learn will be applicable to other contexts and countries.

Speakers

Alexandre Brutelle

Journalist, Environmental Investigative Forum

Alexandre Brutelle is the co-founder and director of the Environmental Investigative Forum (EIF), a global consortium of environmental investigative journalists launched in 2021. He is a former Pultizer Center, Journalism Fund and IJ4EU grantee and also an IJ Project Manager for the... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
3.05

Investigative method, Presentation

11:15am CEST

Keep calm and coordinate: networking meet-up of collaborative investigations coordinators

In the last decade, the number of cross-border collaborative investigations in Europe (and beyond) has exploded, and there are more and more of us with experience of coordinating such collaborative projects.

By the nature of their work, coordinators have been playing a key role in the emergence and establishment of the field and practice of cross-border collaborative journalism. But while there is now also an established network around this practice, it seems that there still isn't much of a specific community of people with coordinating experience. A community where we can meet each other, discuss common challenges and obstacles, share lessons learned and good practices, and get peer support when we are very stressed during an investigation.

If you have experience coordinating cross-border investigations - or if you don't but the role interests you !- and if you feel like meeting other journalists with such expertise and interest, then come to this session! Let's meet each other in person and start building a community around this challenging, stressful, and exciting role!

Speakers

Jose Miguel Calatayud

Freelance journalist and writer

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
Media room

Networking, Roundtable

11:15am CEST

From zero to security hero in one hour and fifteen minutes

Technology and digital safety can be daunting, full of checklists and jargon that keeps changing. Yet it is more imperative than ever that we safeguard ourselves, our contacts and our data. Rather than add more to your check list, this session will help demystify digital security and making sure you can participate in a meaningful conversation around it and take reasonable measures to safeguard your digitial presence. This includes risk assessment, how security experts decide which tools are "safe", plus some essential advice on keeping yourself and others around you digitally safe.

Speakers

Wael Eskandar

Digital Security Trainer, Tactical Technology Collective

Technology is impacting on our civil liberties, our rights, and our autonomy. Tactical Tech is a non-profit organisation who has been responding to these shifts for the past 15 years by finding practical solutions for a global network of activists, technologists and engaged citizens... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
2.03

Safety, Presentation

12:30pm CEST

Lunch

Saturday June 1, 2024 12:30pm - 1:30pm CEST
TBA

Organisational

1:45pm CEST

Exploring AI: How (not) to use LLMs for investigative journalism

The session will showcase several examples of how journalists used large language models in the past year. We will look into examples such as:

1) Using ChatGPT for document analysis. We tried to use ChatGPT for a large-scale text analysis in order to learn how European media outlets covered AI in the past 10 years. The project was an absolute failure. We will explain what we did, and what went wrong.

2) Using Whisper for transcription. Whisper is a tool by OpenAI that lets users transcribe audio files on their computers using an LLM in dozens of languages. It frees journalists from the need to transcribe by hand when the data must not be shared to a third party. We will explain how to use it.

Speakers

Justin-Casimir Braun

Data Reporter, Lighthouse Reports, Germany

Nicolas Kayser-Bril

Reporter, AlgorithmWatch

Naiara Bellio

Reporter, AlgorithmWatch

Naiara covers the topics automated decision-making systems and digital rights at AlgorithmWatch. She also conducts research on the use of algorithmic systems by administrations and tech at borders for organisations such as Fair Trials, EuroMed Rights and AlgoRace. Before, she coordinated... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
Aula 0.10

AI/Algorithms, Panel

1:45pm CEST

#Ground Control: Investigating land ownership in European cities

Do you want to go beyond covering rising rents and tenant evictions? Dive with us into a rarely covered cause of the housing crisis: the land market. We'll show our main findings on land ownership from 10 cities and explain what's relevant about it. We'll show different strategies of acquiring data via FOIs to city governments, by combining and analysing geospatial data and satellite images and by using computer vision. And you'll learn practical tools and methods we learned about during one year of collaborative investigation #GroundControl.

Speakers

Gaby Khazalová

Coordinator, Urban Journalism Network

Gaby Khazalová coordinates collaborative investigations within the Urban Journalism Network, a network of local journalists, media outlets and data analysts, that is dedicated to researching common challenges faced by European cities. She publishes her local investigations with the... Read More →

Hendrik Lehmann

Head of Innovation Lab, Tagesspiegel

Hendrik Lehmann leitet das Tagesspiegel Innovation Lab und baut den europäischen Rechercheverbund Urban Journalism Network mit auf. Er arbeitet vor allem an investigativen Datenanalysen, Dataviz und interaktiven Anwendungen. Und sein Team versucht, AI für investigative Recherche... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
3.09

Cross-border, Presentation

1:45pm CEST

Deforestation Inc: How ICIJ investigated greenwashing in the forestry sector

Uncovering greenwashing in the forestry sector can be done using trade records, open source documents and leaked files. A team of reporters and data journalists from ICIJ will explain methodology that led to the main findings behind Deforestation Inc, a cross-border investigation that exposed the flaws in environmental auditing and forestry certification.

Speakers

Edoardo Anziano

Scilla Alecci

Reporter, Coordinator for EU & Asia, ICIJ

Scilla Alecci is an investigative reporter and video journalist for ICIJ. She is also partnership coordinator for Asia and Europe.

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
1.14

Cross-border, Panel

1:45pm CEST

Different faces of human trafficking - best tips to find the story, the sources and the victims

Wild berry pickers in search of a job are invited to Finland by the berry companies. But the pickers have to pay travel expenses themselves. They take out big loans to get to Finland, but they might earn less than a few dozen euros. Kenyan students are imported to Finland to study, especially healthcare. Students and their families are now caught in a debt trap, and left vulnerable to exploitation, and are possible victims of human trafficking. How do you find and tell their stories? How do you get in touch with workers controlled by their companies? How do you build confidence with the victims, who often live in closed communities and don't speak your language? How do you handle the police that might be investigating the same cases as you? And how do you tell these stories without endangering the people involved?
In this session, journalists will share their tips on how to investigate different faces of human trafficking that can probably also be found in your country.

Speakers

Minna Knus-Galán

Yle, Finnish Broadcasting Company

Tiina Lundell

investigative journalist, Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle)

Tiina Lundell is an investigative reporter from Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle).

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
3.05

Cross-border, Presentation

1:45pm CEST

Clean data like a pro with OpenRefine

In this workshop, we will go through the basic functionalities of OpenRefine, a data cleaning tool used in many projects including the Panama papers and the Danske Bank money laundering story. You will learn to match data against authoritative sources such as OpenCorporates or Wikidata, cluster similar values in a column, and many other useful tricks. After attending this session, participants will be able to automate otherwise tedious data cleaning tasks. To attend this session, no prior knowledge is required. The necessary software will be installed on the school computers. If you are using your own laptop will need to install OpenRefine and check that it runs before the session.

Speakers

Hervé Letoqueux

OpenFacto

Co-Founder of OpenFacto with Lou (@CapteursOuverts) and Aliaume (@yaolri), a french NGO dedicated to online investigation for journalists and activists, I love OpenSource researches, Python, Gephi, R and OpenRefine. I used to deal with money laundering, financial frauds and terrorism... Read More →

Anuška Delić

founder, Oštro

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

1:45pm CEST

Exploring AI: So, you wanna talk with your documents using AI?

Have you ever found yourself wondering: what if my documents could talk back to me? The ability to extract, interpret, and utilize information from documents efficiently is crucial, not only for journalists but also for their audience. In this session you will learn the basics of Large Language Models(LLMs), how they work and how you can build a tool with them for your newsroom (or maybe even for your audience), as well as practical and ethical questions. Bring along a set of documents (preferably in .txt format), along with your creativity, and you will leave this session with a template to be used whenever you want to use AI to "chat" with a set of documents. Participants will leave with an understanding of basic concepts behind LLMs, how they work, and what exactly is happening behind the screen when you use a tool like ChatGPT. Participants should not be strangers to coding. Some web development and R knowledge is recommended, but not essential. All the necessary software will be pre-installed on the school computers. If you are bringing your own laptop you will need to install Node.js (https://nodejs.org/en/download), a web browser, a code editor of your choice, and R/Rstudio.

Speakers

Rui Barros

data journalist, Público

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

1:45pm CEST

Fact-checkable Spreadsheets

We've all been there. It's been weeks or months since we did the analysis. It's almost publication time and the story has reached the fact-checking stage. If you've ever worked with OCCRP, you know how rigorous this process can be. Can you explain every number? Maybe you used filters, but have long since undone and redone them? What did you do exactly? Why did you do it? What assumptions did you make? Participants will learn concrete ways of making your spreadsheets self-documenting and ready for the fact-checking stage - assuring a better experience for everyone involved! Familiarity with spreadsheets is ideal, but the concepts we will cover apply to any data analysis for investigative journalism. We'll be using Google Sheets.

Speakers

Eric Barret

Data Desk Manager, OCCRP

Serena Frijters

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
2.10

Data skills, Hands-on

1:45pm CEST

17 ways to measure impact : how to listen to the echos of your investigations

In 2023, the non-profit investigative news outlet Disclose, based in France, introduced a set of 17 indicators to measure the impact of its work. From political change to judicial cases, they spotted more than 500 echoes of our investigations last year.
What does it take to measure these echoes? How did they build their methodology to assess the impact of our stories? And how to communicate the results to the public? During this session, Pierre Leibovici will present the database Disclose uses in order to categorise the impacts and to deliver two impact reports each year (one for the public, the other one for the funders). He will also share their reflections on all the benefits of measuring impact, from improving reader loyalty to finding a better sense of why we are doing investigative journalism.

Speakers

Pierre Leibovici

Journalist, Disclose

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
2.02

Entrepreneurial, Presentation

1:45pm CEST

Everything is classified. How to investigate when the state conceals all crucial data?

In 2020, the Belarusian authorities started concealing statistics without official warning. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they stopped publishing data on population mortality, and amid sanctions, they closed down foreign trade statistics. In early 2023, an official decree was issued stating that the main statistical agency could officially withhold statistical data for the sake of national security. The principle of defining data that threatens national security is not specified. During this presentation, you will learn about the investigation methods of the Belarusian Investigative Center. We will look at how Belarus circumvents EU sanctions on the supply of nitrogen fertilizers to Lithuania and Serbia. We will show you how to investigate sanctions evasion without access to your country's foreign trade data, and how to research social media to uncover secret assets and details of the lives of individuals when FOI requests are not respected. Our approaches can be applied anywhere - even where access to information is much easier. This workshop may inspire you to check what stories might be hiding in your country too.

Speakers

Alina Yanchur

Data and Investigative Journalist, Belarusian Investigative Center

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
3.04

Instant inspiration, Presentation

1:45pm CEST

Reveal deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia combining data and OSINT

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Russia started forcibly deporting orphans from the occupied territories. Combining data analysis, OSINT, and other investigative methods, we produced a series of investigations in which we determined how many Ukrainian children may have ended up in Russia and uncovered the first documented case of a
child being adopted from Ukraine by a high-ranking Russian official. This led to EU sanctions against one of the antagonists of the investigation.
In this session, we will talk about:
- how to use open government data to uncover the deportation;
- how to check if the government data lies to you;
- how to collect and update an open data base to track the children;
- how to work with stories published in government media to reveal the stories of deported children;
- how to achieve impact even when it is impossible to work inside the country because of the threat of criminal prosecution.

Speakers

Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya

IStories

Data and investigative reporter at Important Stories. After the full-scale war in Ukraine began, I investigate the deportation of children and disabled people from Ukraine to Russia.Awards:The Sigma Awards 2022 (Important Stories)Two-time Redkollegia Award winner (Novaya Gazeta 2021... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
3.02

Instant inspiration, Presentation

1:45pm CEST

Tracking ships - DIY edition

We built a ship tracking device for 100 Euro, and you can do it too! Keeping track of commercial vessels and private yachts is key to many OCCRP investigations. We wanted to build our own tools to work on commercial databases. In this session, you will learn how different ship-tracking databases work, what you can get out of them, and how you can build a cheap device that will allow you to track ships from your desktop.

Speakers

Alina Tsogoeva

Senior Researcher, OCCRP

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

Investigative method, Hands-on

1:45pm CEST

FOI journalists in Europe, unite!

The goal of this informal get-together is to bring together journalists using access to documents procedures with European institutions. The meeting aims to gather people who want to learn how to do access requests, as well as proficient users who are concerned about the increasing difficulties created by the European institutions that wish to resist transparency. The organizers consider creating a platform that would bring together journalists, offer training and support to conduct access to documents request, and start on their behalf a dialogue with EU institutions.

Speakers

Jean Comte

Alexander Fanta

Follow the Money

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
Media room

Networking

1:45pm CEST

What makes a good map? (Not a new tool)

Drought in the Suez canal, Houthi attacks on vessels in the Bab Al-Mandab strait, European sanctions on Russian oil, intensified hurricanes across oceans, the establishment of a new Arctic route – these are just some of the disruptions currently affecting world’s main maritime routes. How can we show the complexity and effects of such inter-related events? What processes lie behind the production and visualisation of this sort of information? In short: how can we turn all this into a map (and a good one)? Every day, a team at Le Monde meticulously gathers data, discusses with practitioners, shipping industry actors, researchers, analysts and big data agencies to produce a cartography of global maritime phenomena. In this session, Riccardo Pravettoni, journalist and cartographer at Le Monde will explain in detail how he and his team work to get from the initial idea to the final result. He will showcase real cases, with all their hurdles, reverses, tough decisions and "eureka moments". Drawing on 15 years of experience in cartography, Riccardo will also talk about avoiding some of the common mistakes in working with geographical data.

Moderators

Federico Caruso

Editorial coordinator, European Data Journalism Network - OBC Transeuropa

Speakers

Riccardo Pravettoni

Journalist-cartographer, Le Monde

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
1.16

Storytelling, Presentation

3:00pm CEST

Coffee break

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:00pm - 3:30pm CEST
TBA

Organisational

3:30pm CEST

Exploring AI: How Big Tech watered down the AI Act

Since the launch of ChatGPT more than a year ago, Artificial Intelligence has dominated the news cycle. As scientists, academics, and NGOs warned about the possible risks of these systems, Big Tech entered into a fierce lobbying battle in Brussels to water down the EU AI Act to stave off any legal obligations.In this presentation, Bram Vranken from Corporate EUrope Obervatory will give you tips and tricks for researching Big Tech lobbying and how to trace Big Tech's footprints on the AI Act.

Speakers

Bram Vranken

Researcher and campaigner, Corporate Europe Observatory

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
3.02

AI/Algorithms, Presentation

3:30pm CEST

How to be an investigations editor

If you are the editor of an investigative team, your tasks are different from your reporters'. You must plan ahead and have an overview of the workflow; you have to decide which cross-border projects to join; how to develop topics and team skills. At the same time you need to make sure the results meet high journalistic standards. This session will have a special focus on factchecking routines, thanks to the learning Lighthouse Reports' managing editor Daniel Howden is willing to share. Let's gather experienced editors around the table to exchange on tips, failures and experiences from the job, moderated by Elisa Simantke, senior investigative editor at paper trail media. Join if you are the editor or leader of an investigative team!
If you have valuable experiences to share yourself, please write to media@journalismarena.eu so we can feature it in the session.

Moderators

Daniel Howden

Managing Director, Lighthouse Reports

Founder and lead journalist at Lighthouse Reports, an award-winning European investigative nonprofit. Responsible for building an innovative investigations team working with some of the world's leading media on far-reaching, high impact stories. Lead on strategy, fundraising and recruitment.Experienced... Read More →

Elisa Simantke

Senior Investigative Editor, Paper Trail Media

Elisa Simantke is an investigative editor and co-leads investigations at paper trail media. Paper trail media is an award-winning team that is dedicated to international impact journalism and was founded by Bastian Obermayer & Frederik Obermaier. The reporters at ptm collaborate with... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
3.05

Cross-border, Panel

3:30pm CEST

Roundtable for data educators - inspiration and skill sharing

In this session, we will share our best practices on making participants in our courses embrace data journalism. We will share examples of exercises, workshops, and assignments. We will start with some experienced educators, and then the floor to all the participants. Bring your examples of exercises and assignments, or just come by and get inspired

Speakers

Sandra Foresti

Lecturer, University of Gothenburg

Lecturer, Department of Journalism and Communication at University of Göteborg, Sweden. I teach data journalism and investigative journalism at bachelor and master level. Background as researcher, investigative journalist and data journalism at different Swedish media organisati... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
2.03

Data journalism, Roundtable

3:30pm CEST

DuckDB for quick data manipulation

In the IT world, big data is usually managed using SQL, a language which has been around since the 70s. It is very good at what it does. Yet, in the journalism world, we tend to forget about these unsexy old tools and are dazzled by shiny new tools like R and Python. DuckDB is a database tool aimed at getting rid of the heavy lifting (setting up a server, managing access, etc.). It allows you to focus directly on the data analysis. It's a tool you can quickly try out and adopt. It can be used in combination with other tools you are already using (Python, R, node.js, java...) Participants will carry out test tasks in a webpage, without having to install anything - DuckDB is used directly in the browser. After attending this session, participants will have an idea of the features of DuckDB, and how to integrate it with other data tools they already use. No experience in a particular tool or language is required. Bringing your own laptop is advised.

Speakers

Luc Martinon

Data Scientist, working for Le Monde and on the eurosfordocs.eu project

Eric Barret

Data Desk Manager, OCCRP

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

3:30pm CEST

Getting the data behind websites (and what are ‘undocumented APIs’?)

Sometimes information on a website can be fetched as data directly without having to write complicated scrapers to turn it into data — you just need to know where to look. Undocumented APIs are databases that might be used by a website to put points on an interactive map, or deliver search results. In this session you will learn what they are, how to use the browser’s ‘inspector’ to find them, and how to get data out of them.

By the end of this session attendees should be able to: Understand what undocumented APIs are and where they can be useful journalistically; Use the browser’s inspector to identify undocumented APIs and — sometimes — fetch the data from it Convert JSON data from an undocumented API into a spreadsheet

No prior knowledge is required to attend, but a familiarity with spreadsheets is needed to deal with the results of the process.

You will need a laptop with Chrome or Firefox, as well as a Google Drive account.

Speakers

Max Harlow

Financial Times

Paul Bradshaw

Journalist and Academic, BBC/Birmingham City University

Paul Bradshaw runs the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University and also works as a consulting data journalist with the BBC Shared Data Unit. A journalist, writer and trainer, he has worked with news organisations including The Guardian, Telegraph, Mirror, Der Tagesspi... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

3:30pm CEST

How to build Telegram bot for needs of a journalist

Investigative journalist's work among other things require using huge datasets on a day-to-day basis. Some parts of this work could be simplified and automatised. One of the approaches for that could be a service realized through Telegram-bot that will be built during the session.

The participants should have basic knowledge of Python. We will use GoogleColab for the session. Attending this session will make you be able to built a simple Telegram bot and will have an example of the one built during the session.

Speakers

Misha Gagrin

Researcher, OCCRP

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
2.1

Data skills, Hands-on

3:30pm CEST

From journalist to manager - what do you need to learn?

You begin with a smart idea for a new journalism or media start-up – and suddenly you find yourself as a manager with responsibilities for finances, reporting to funders, HR problems and admin on top of the journalistic priorities. How do you make it? What do you need to learn, how and where? We have asked four experienced journalists-turned-directors to share their experiences and mistakes and tell how they got to the place they are today.

Moderators

Elisabetta Tola

founder - science&data journalist, Facta

Speakers

Eva Belmonte

Director, Civio

Eva Belmonte (Spain, 1982) is a journalist specialised in public data treatment and analysis. She gained journalistic experience writing and editing for major Spanish media organisations like El Mundo, where she worked from 2005 to 2012. She is currently Director at Fundación Civio... Read More →

Anuška Delić

founder, Oštro

Emilia Díaz-Struck

Director, Global Investigative Journalism Network

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
3.04

Entrepreneurial, Panel

3:30pm CEST

Investigating how Russia evades sanctions

One embargo after the other is decided against Russia, but still tons of sensitive goods are reaching Russia, some of them officially labelled for China and other neighbouring countries.
Military experts and NGO have already shown several times that Western products are built into rockets, drones and other devices used against Ukraine. But how do they actually get to Russia?
Starting with some hints, reporters from Germany, Finland and Russia dug into the topic, following the traces that those transfers leave. Finally, they found a database with customs data, allowing them to sort by categories of goods, finding more and more information…
The reporters will show their methodology, but since part of the project is still under way, not all can yet be told…

Moderators

Marcus Lindemann

managing editor, autoren(werk) GmbH & Co.KG

Speakers

Claus Hesseling

freier Journalist und Trainer, freier Journalist

Claus Hesseling arbeitet als Datenjournalist und Trainer. Seit 2013 setzt er beim NDR in Hamburg datenjournalistische Projekte um und berät Journalistinnen und Journalisten in Daten-Fragen. Er konzipiert und leitet datenjournalistiche Workshops und bringt Journalistinnen und Journalisten... Read More →

Axel Rappe

journalist, YLE (Finnish public broadcaster)

Axel Rappe is an investigative reporter from Finnish Broadcasting Company (svenska Yle).

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

Investigative method, Presentation

3:30pm CEST

Let's investigate urban challenges! Networking meeting with the Urban Journalism Network

Are you a local reporter searching for a broader European perspective to enhance your stories? In the Urban Journalism Network, we connect investigative and data journalists to share their research and exchange innovative methods for exploring the most pressing urban challenges. In this session, we will brainstorm on how to investigate issues such as the housing crisis across countries. The session is an opportunity to meet the members of the Urban Journalism Network, follow up on their presentation of the collaborative project #GroundControl investigating land ownership, and join the network's projects.

Speakers

Hendrik Lehmann

Head of Innovation Lab, Tagesspiegel

Gaby Khazalová

Coordinator, Urban Journalism Network

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
Media room

Networking, Presentation

3:30pm CEST

Stay open source and encrypted: Signal as an editorial tool

Learn how to use Signal as a tool for communicating and collaborating safely with sources, colleagues and other contacts. Signal is not just a free open source-tool, but one of the best and most secure encrypted communication tools you can find. We will work with Signal for desktop and phone, going from basic set up to more advanced settings. We will also learn how to make a threat assessment to help you decide when and how to use Signal - and when you may need to consider other safety measures.

Speakers

Freja Wedenborg

Lecturer of journalism, University of Southern Denmark

Freja Wedenborg is a journalistic lecturer at SDU, the University of Southern Denmark, where she teaches investigative, digital journalism, OSINT, data journalism and digital security. She is also the author of the book Cryptoguide for Journalists.

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
2.02

Safety, Hands-on

4:30pm CEST

Coffee break

Saturday June 1, 2024 4:30pm - 5:00pm CEST
TBA

Organisational

5:15pm CEST

Exploring AI: Automated Criminal Justice: Digging into Policing Algorithms

The police and the judicial system use a lot of automated decision-making systems to support their work. Sometimes they accuse innocent people or discriminate against particular population groups. Researching these systems presents many challenges, mostly because the police are very secretive about how they manage them, where they obtain the data to train them, and what data inputs are used for analysis. In most cases, both the inner workings of the algorithms and their effects on individuals are opaque. This makes journalistic research in this area essential, even though it is sometimes blocked by the authorities and by public administrations. This session will look at how to accomplish this kind of research and reporting. We will present information and recently unveiled data on several algorithms and AI systems used in Germany and Spain. We will also expand on the methodologies we used to uncover this information and the difficulties that we faced during the research. Attendees will be able to learn about how to report on this niche field, which mixes technology and crime reporting, and how to face the problems of looking at the police from a new perspective - the technological one.

Speakers

Sonja Peteranderl

Founder, BuzzingCities Lab

Sonja Peteranderl is a journalist and founder of BuzzingCities Lab, a think tank that focuses on the impact of technology on violence and crime, and the School of Conflict & Peace. She reports on organized crime, urban violence, digital violence, security/police and tech trends from... Read More →

Naiara Bellio

Reporter, AlgorithmWatch

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

AI/Algorithms, Presentation

5:15pm CEST

Decoding the Climate: A Journalist's Guide to Understanding Climate Data

This workshop will focus on why temperature, sea level rise, CO2 levels are the key metrics we need to focus on. We will look at the best places to find them. Basic knowledge of Python or R is recommended for the practical part of the session in which we will learn how to identify trends, anomalies, and conduct comparative analyses to create impactful journalistic storytelling.

Speakers

Marina Caporlingua

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
1.14

Data journalism, Presentation

5:15pm CEST

From grassroots to global impact: How to professionalise your data work

The Centre of Information Resilience (CIR) documents and gathers data on human rights abuses across the world to expose wrongdoing by working with media, and supporting humanitarian and accountability mechanisms through investigations. It has grown from a small organisation to having 100 researchers collecting, verifying and archiving information across the world, often in hard to reach areas such as Myanmar, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Sudan. With more than 70,000 entries, including 42,000 verified and analysed, the challenge lies in making that data structured and useful! During this session, we will share our methods, and you’ll:
• Learn practical techniques for setting up and managing low-cost databases/sets (of any size) to streamline data collection, analysis, and verification workflows.
• Gain an understanding of data governance principles to uphold data quality and security standards.
• Explore the importance of internal cultural shifts towards a data-driven approach, empowering journalists to wield available tools and resources more effectively.
• Discover the power of collaboration with external partners, leveraging data, contextual knowledge, and technical expertise to elevate your storytelling to new heights in data journalism.
• Learn some simple methods to visualise, present and share data with non-data audiences.
CIR commits to sharing data and providing investigative support to journalists and media outlets. This collaborative approach ensures that findings reach a global audience, driving change and sparking conversations on human rights issues worldwide.

Speakers

Kayleigh de Ruiter

Data&Tech team lead, Centre for Information Resilience

She works with teams of investigators from different projects covering Myanmar, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine and more to build and connect datasets and coordinates efforts to log, archive, verify, categorise, visualise and share datasets related to human rights and justice and accountability... Read More →

Lewis Kay

Data Architect, Centre of Information Resilience

Lewis leads data architecture and data systems at CIR. He designs and implements architecture to help CIR projects collect, store, query and share their data and oversees unifying data standards in the organization. He also manages external partnerships with technical platform providers... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
3.05

Data journalism, Presentation

5:15pm CEST

Data cleaning on steroids: regex to the rescue

Extract and clean up messy data with the wonderful and powerful Regex language. We will introduce you to a powerful syntax library that can help you clean up data, turn text into a table you can drop into a spreadsheet or database program. This session is for journalists who already know the basics but want to venture more into programming, and for advanced data journalists looking for new tools in their struggles with dirty data.

Speakers

Rob Gebeloff

Reporter, New York Times

Alina Yanchur

Data and Investigative Journalist, Belarusian Investigative Center

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

5:15pm CEST

Exploring AI: I give you a URL and you give me back LEGO bricks - OR - How to use an LLM to write your first scraper

Participants will write a simple web scraper in python. An LLM will be used as a coding assistant to write the scraper’s skeleton and help participants overcome obstacles. Participants will also learn that LLMs, can’t be trusted blindly:judgment and domain expertise are needed to navigate the LLM’s answers. After this session participants will be able to implement a very basic web scraper with python; use an LLM as coding assistant and understand its limitations. No coding skills are required. (Participants should be comfortable copy-pasting python code even if they don't understand 100% what it's doing) A very basic (even if abstract) understanding of what a web scraper does will help the participants follow the workshop flow. You will need to set up a (free) account with ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com) We will be using Google Collab (a web tool) to write and execute python; no additional software is needed on your computer.

Speakers

Vangelis Katsikaros

Head of Infrastructure, Adzuna

Vangelis is a software engineer in Athens, Greece. Currently, he is Head of Infrastructure at Adzuna. He has spent most of his career with web crawling, DBs and backend systems. He likes solving business as well as system performance and reliability problems.

Philip McMahon

Software Developer, The Guardian

Phil McMahon is an engineer at The Guardian. Recently his work has focussed on data journalism projects, whistleblowing systems, searching document dumps and working with UK Parliament/Company/Land Registry data.

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

5:15pm CEST

Our Town: data journalism to help you find untold stories about your community

How do you use data to tell the story about changing living conditions in your city? The local newspaper iTromsø won a Norwegian datajournalism award for their revelations about increasing social and economic differences in the city of Tromsø. The journalists combined data about income, property, poverty and more, to make a demographic journey into unknown parts of the city. Their presentation of the data included making a virtual bus tour and a quiz about Tromsø, so their readers could explore the changing neighbourhoods. They also published a lot of personal stories. In this session, data editor Rune Ytreberg will reveal the tools, methods and data the journalists used in this urban investigation – and hopefully inspire you to do similar stories where you live.

Speakers

Rune Ytreberg

Journalist, Itromsø

Editor for in iTromsø and Polaris media. Worked five years at Dagens Næringsliv, 10 years at NRK Brennpunkt, and 25 years as a journalist. Based in Tromsø, where I cover Tromsø and the northern areas, and work with computer journalism in all media. Editor for ITromsø's computer... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
3.09

Instant inspiration, Presentation

5:15pm CEST

How to Investigate Shipwrecks - a deep dive into digital forensic techniques

With the recently signed Migration Pact in the EU forcing people to take more deadly routes to Europe, and deadly enforcement policies affecting migration pathways to the United States, in the year ahead it is almost inevitable that we will have more mass migration casualty events in the year ahead. The ability to investigate deadly shipwrecks is therefore more necessary than ever.
This will highlight the importance of digital forensic methodologies in investigations related to shipwrecks with an emphasis on:
-Signal data (ADSB, AIS, Inmarsat, etc.)
-Remote sensing (optical and SAR imagery)
-Open-source approaches (social media scraping, visual evidence collection)
In the presentation, we will also delve into acquisition and application of these methods in the context of a shipwreck investigation. We will also discuss the mapping and visualisation workflows which are important for analysis and publication, and specifically, we will discuss:
-The use of mapping software for cartography and analysis
-3D reconstruction and analysis
- Motion graphic visualization
Finally, we will discuss the importance of mixed methodologies in this approach, specifically highlighting the need for person-to-person source work and interviews.

Speakers

Bashar Deeb

OSINT investigator, Lighthouse Reports

Bashar is an investigative journalist with a specialization in digital investigations. He has participated in different teams that have produced groundbreaking reports on various issues such as the violation of human rights of asylum seekers at EU’s borders, Europe’s secretive... Read More →

Jack Sapoch

Lighthouse Reports

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
Aula 0.10

Investigative method, Presentation

5:15pm CEST

Arena Labour Network - informal networking meeting

Arena's Labour Network has over 80 members on Signal, regularly sharing tips, questions, ideas and opportunities. This open session is a chance for anyone inside the Labour Network or interested in joining to get together in person. As this network is currently unfunded, and any ideas or initiatives will be followed up by the participants themselves. But we want to create time and space for those in the network to meet and come up with their own ideas for what should happen next.

Speakers

Hazel Sheffield

Coordinator, Arena for Journalism

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
Media room

Networking, Roundtable

9:30pm CEST

The Great Robbery by Greek border guards: building a story from limited data

Pushbacks of people on the move by Greek border guards in Evros region, the land border with Turkey, have been well documented by journalists over the past years. Theft of their belongings has also been reported, but how do talk about the scale of this issue when concrete data is missing?

This session will present the needed mixture of traditional, shoe-leather reporting in the region, and access to sources (e.g. Frontex, border guards, institutions) on the ground, in combination with a gathering and analysis of data on all recorded cases of the pushback and theft (e.g. by NGOs) over the past years. This approach has allowed us to create a victim's 'profile,' and conclude that, during the last six years, members of the Greek security forces have stolen more than €2 million in cash (at least €2.2 – 2.8 million) from asylum seekers.

We will present different sets of sources, which allowed the reporters to map out trends in border guards' behavior and get an understanding of the wider trend instead on individual experiences.

Speakers

Andrés Mourenza

EL PAÍS

Journalist based in Istanbul and working in the region (Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Caucasus, Middle East) since 2005 for different Spanish media. Interest: Data, Demographics, Migration, Conflicts, Middle East, Southeastern Europe, Economy

Stavros Malichudis

Reporter, Solomon

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30pm - 10:45pm CEST
3.09

Instant inspiration, Presentation

9:00am CEST

Coffee

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:00am - 9:30am CEST
Media forum

Organisational

9:30am CEST

Follow the hacker's footprint to a good story

As many states around the globe are ramping up their cyberespionage operations, it becomes all the more important to be able to find out what methods they are using. More often than not, hackers do leave behind digital fingerprints which in turn can be used to re-trace some (maybe even most!) of their steps. In this talk, Hakan Tanriverdi will walk the audience through various ways (some of them are openly available) to conduct investigations into these (state-sponsored) hacking activities. While some of the examples shown might be of immediate use, i.e. for verification, the talk aims to provide an overview by way of generating leads that warrant attention and some further digging.

Speakers

Hakan Tanriverdi

Senior Investigative Reporter, Paper Trail Media

I'm working as a reporter with a focus on digital espionage, most often conducted by state-sponsored hackers (sometimes criminal groups as well). Our main goal is to try and find as much pieces of information – from phishing mails to used infrastructure etc. – and then try follow... Read More →

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

Cross-border, Presentation

9:30am CEST

How we created our own datasets to track retail vacancy rates across half of Scotland's cities (and so can you)

With the impact of the pandemic and cost of living crisis our high streets are struggling. Our newsrooms were constantly reporting on businesses closing. However when we went to quantify the current situation we found there was very little data available - so we created it. The DC Thomson data team have been tracking the health of Scotland's high streets for almost a year now. We now track data for 1,810 retail properties across half of Scotland's cities.
The data is updated daily and for each city we produce quarterly reports on the state of play. We'll show you how we did it, from gathering the initial data, to drawing the maps, to our update workflow - all maintained by a team of three data journalists.

We'll also show you how this data is used internally by reporters to provide exclusive context for their daily reporting as well as to generate leads for everything from one off stories to full investigations. Since launching in June 2023 this project has been shortlisted for the Sigma awards and recently was named winner of the WAN-IFRA Europe awards in the Best Data Visualisation category.

Speakers

Lesley-Anne Kelly

Head of data journalism, DC Thomson

I'm the head of data journalism at Scottish publisher DC Thomson. I run a small data journalism team (myself and two data journalists) and we are passionate about making data more accessible for our readers.

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
3.02

Data journalism, Presentation

9:30am CEST

Automated copy pasting: your first python scraper

With the help of relatively simple scrapers journalists can collect a lot of data and use it in stories. In this session participants will learn how to write their own scrapers using Python. No prior knowledge required. If bringing your own laptop, you will need Python and Anaconda installed.

Speakers

Alesya Marohovskaya

The Head of the Data Department, Investigative and Data Reporter, IStories

Alina Yanchur

Data and Investigative Journalist, Belarusian Investigative Center

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
2.10

Data skills, Hands-on

9:30am CEST

Data visualisations with R

One of R's biggest strengths is its ability to visualise data far more flexibly than Excel/Googlesheets. We will be showing you how to build up a visualisation from data using the popular ggplot2 package By the end of this session you will be able to take your chosen data or a subset of it, and make it tell you stories visually. This year we are making the 3 R sessions "self-standing" - so if you know some R already, you can join R3 without attending R1 or 2 We will be using a cloud version of RStudio accessible through a browser. No installation necessary. The lesson materials will be available after Dataharvest

Speakers

Jonathan Stoneman

Lead trainer, Arena for Journalism in Europe

Luuk Sengers

Journalist & trainer, Story-Based Inquiry Associates / De Groene Amsterdammer

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
2.09

Data skills, Hands-on

9:30am CEST

Dataiku - one tool to master it all

Dataiku is a powerful tool journalists can use to do investigations and everyday artificial intelligence. Learn how you and your team can cooperate to make data-driven news stories, and investigations without coding. In this session you will learn how to use the platform to make a data-driven production: import, clean, combine and analyse data, and maybe use AI to predict the future. You can test the software here at dataiku academy (https://academy.dataiku.com/page/quick-start-programs) and download Dataiku here: https://www.dataiku.com/product/get-started/windows/ After this session the participants will be able to understand basic use of Dataiku DSS to join, clean and analyze data. Some knowledge of spreadsheets or SQL would be beneficial. No other prior knowledge is required, and no specific tools needed.

Speakers

Rune Ytreberg

Journalist, Itromsø

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

9:30am CEST

Beyond Nicotine: Unmasking Big Tobacco profiting from medical products

In recent years, major tobacco companies have ventured into medical products while still exploiting tobacco markets in Asia and Africa. In this presentation we will reveal how Big Tobacco strategically targets health conditions caused or exacerbated by smoking; how they profit from remedies for asthma, COPD, diabetes, heart disease, and addiction. Discover how they selling cigarettes and remedies cleverly doubles their profits. This session isn't just about sharing information; it's about empowering you to delve deeper into the world of multinational corporations. You will gain valuable insight into Big Tobacco's tactics and learn how to navigate the complex world of corporate influence. We'll take you behind the scenes of our research process: from dissecting corporate structures to navigating complex medical terminology. We'll show you how Big Tobacco's influence shapes narratives and public discourse, and how to expose those tactics. This is an ongoing investigation, so we're also actively seeking journalists interested in collaborating with us to find out whether similar things are happening in their own country.

Speakers

Irene van den Berg

Investigative journalist, The Investigative Desk

Irene van den Berg (1978) has been an independent journalist since 2006. I focus on the tobacco and food industry. My latest project is about the investments of major tobacco companies in the pharmaceutical industry. I enjoy meeting other journalists who are investigating Big Tob... Read More →

Mathilde de Jeu

The Investigative Desk

Freelance investigative journalist, based in Amsterdam. Member of The Investigative Desk. Specialized in Food and Tobacco, focusing on big food & agricultural industries and new tobacco products.

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
1.14

Instant inspiration, Presentation

9:30am CEST

Let's find oil and gas permits in protected areas: How to use QGIS to find (and fact-check) stories

This hands-on training session destined to beginners will explore how to use cartography tools to find a story lead by cross-referencing two sets of geo-data. The session will cover how to process an image into a processable shape in QGIS, to then compare with environmental data layers, based on EIF (Environmental Investigative Forum) work about France's second largest oil and gas giant, Perenco. Using oil and gas permits geo-data, this session will enable you to reuse this methodology in other fields and topics of interest. It is necessary that participants come with QGIS installed on their laptop to be able to follow the presentation!

Speakers

Alexandre Brutelle

Journalist, Environmental Investigative Forum

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
1.16

Investigative method, Presentation

9:30am CEST

Using Bluetooth in investigations

Bluetooth trackers are very useful tools when one needs to document if things are going where they are supposed to go. In this session you will hear about several projects that showed items from cars to computers going to surprising destinations – and the code that made the investigations possible.
Finish YLE TV heard about cars being exported to Russia through Finland while officially being labvelled for Kazakhstan How prove it? Two reporters waited in the harbour of Kotka for a ship from Travemünde arriving with a load of cars. They managed to stick trackers on the cars and later saw them delivered in Tomsk, Siberia.
In a still ongoing project for German TV, 32 of these devices are tracking the whereabouts of electronic waste. Steffi Helbig and her colleagues disposed of 4 items of used electronics in 8 different cities in Germany and now are tracking their journeys. One thing is certain: they are traveling, some already abroad – whereas German law allows basically one final journey either to a repair site or to sensible disposal.
In further projects these reporters from Finland and Germany successfully sent parcels to Russia despite the embargoes, again tracking the routes of the goods with Bluetooth devices.

Moderators

Marcus Lindemann

managing editor, autoren(werk) GmbH & Co.KG

Speakers

Axel Rappe

journalist, YLE (Finnish public broadcaster)

Axel Rappe is an investigative reporter from Finnish Broadcasting Company (svenska Yle).

Steffi Helbig

freie Reporterin

Claus Hesseling

freier Journalist und Trainer, freier Journalist

Sunday June 2, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
3.05

Investigative method, Presentation

10:45am CEST

Coffee break

Sunday June 2, 2024 10:45am - 11:15am CEST
Media forum

Organisational

11:15am CEST

How to investigate public trade flow data with Comext

When investigating organized crime or sanctions evasions, it might be worth working with the Comext data portal from Eurostat. It's a powerful, public record for tracking the global trade in goods. With a little help from Comext, research into organized crime can be narrowed down locally, and even sanctions evasion can be made visible. CORRECTIV has been using it to nail down textile smuggling from China. In this session, we will give a run-down on how to use it best.

Speakers

Till Eckert

Investigativer Reporter, CORRECTIV

Till Eckert ist spezialisiert auf OSINT-, Daten- und Cross-Border-Recherchen. Er beschäftigte sich jahrelang mit der Wirkung von Desinformation auf Demokratien, zeigte mit einer bislang einmaligen Datenrecherche, wie Instagram zum Werkzeug für Rechtsextreme wurde und legte chinesische... Read More →

Sunday June 2, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
1.14

Data buffet, Presentation

11:15am CEST

How to hold fossil fuel facilitators accountable

Reducing fossil fuel use is key to mitgating the climate crisis. Yet, the extractive industry still operates under a veil of opacity and secrecy. Unlike climate data, which is idely available, information on new oil and gas projects remains scarce and expensive. In this session we will look at how journalists from Le Monde and two French NGOs worked together to gather data on more than 400 fossil fuel projects and the companies enabling their existence.

Speakers

Maxime Vaudano

Datajournalist, Le Monde - Les Décodeurs

I use code and spreadsheets as much as words in my reporting for Le Monde (France). In my daily life, I write explainers and produce visualisations on the general news for a section called Les Décodeurs. But I am also secretly in love with on French politics, international trade... Read More →

Sunday June 2, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

Data journalism, Panel

11:15am CEST

Building your first scrollytelling data visualization

Have you ever seen a scrollytelling article and wanted to do something similar, but found it all too complicated? Yes and yes?! This session is for you. You will learn the basics of Svelte, and how to combine it with no-code services like Flourish. The aim is to produce interactive long-form articles that use scrollytelling techniques to tell a compelling story. Bring along a dataset, your creativity, and ideas, and you will leave this session with a template to be used whenever you want to publish something that uses the power of scrolling to tell a story. Some prior experience in web development and with Flourish is recommended, and some knowledge of web development technologies. All the necessary software will be pre-installed on the school computers. If you are bringing your own laptop you will need to install Node.js (https://nodejs.org/en/download), a web browser, and a code editor.

Speakers

Rui Barros

data journalist, Público

Krisztián Szabó

data journalist, Átlátszó, ATLO

Sunday June 2, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
TBA

Data skills, Hands-on

11:15am CEST

Oh no I shut my laptop! Running your app/scraper reliably in the cloud

Work on a project often requires you to fetch information from the internet repeatedly - for example when archiving tweets. Or you might want to download a huge dataset without risking running out of disk space.
In this session we will look at how to set up a server in the cloud and run your code on it.
Participants are welcome to bring code they want to try running, but we'll also provide an example project focused on regularly downloading videos posted on https://map.snapchat.com/.
Participants will learn what tools they need to run their own code on a remote server. Some experience of using the command line is recommended, along with knowledge of at least one coding/scripting language

Speakers

Vangelis Katsikaros

Head of Infrastructure, Adzuna

Philip McMahon

Software Developer, The Guardian

Sunday June 2, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
TBA

Data skills, Hands-on

11:15am CEST

Making the most of dorking to track crooks in sport

Dorking is not only a town in England, it's also a vital OSINT technique. In this session we will learn from case studies how dorking has been used by sports journalists to help uncover illegal sports betting, and multi-club ownership. We will learn that dorking and OSINT techniques are relatively simple to acquire and use.

Speakers

Philippe Auclair

Investigative Reporter, Josimar

Philippe Auclair is a French London-based investigative print and broadcast journalist who writes for a variety of media, including the BBC World Service, The Guardian, Josimar, Eurosport, 11 Freunde and others. His France Football dossier on the corruption surrounding the 2022 Qatar... Read More →

Sunday June 2, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
3.05

Investigative method, Presentation

12:45pm CEST

Goodbye - see you next year!

Sunday June 2, 2024 12:45pm - 1:15pm CEST
Media forum

Networking