Dataharvest 2024 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference: Full Schedule

Join us for networking, learning, sharing and fun!

9:00am CEST

Coffee

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

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

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

Freelance reporter, Algorithm Watch, Next

As a French journalist specializing in digital issues, I study the effects of technology on society and how the latter shapes ongoing innovations. I have worked with the Guardian, Algorithm Watch, Slate France, 20 Minutes, and other tech-specialized and general news outlets. I wrote... 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

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 →

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

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 →

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

Luc Martinon

Freelance data journalist

Freelance data journalist, based in Berlin. I work on different cross border projects, the last big one being the Forever Pollution Project.Proud member of the CORRECTIV.Europe project.Topics: corporate capture, conflicts of interest, national and EU lobbying, chemical pollution... Read More →

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 →

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 is a Berlin-based investigative health and science journalist, using data driven methods to tacke research integrity issues and systemic problems in medicine. Hristio is freelance investigations reporter at The BMJ (British Medical Journal) and leader of “Follow the Gra... 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

One year undercover to reveal political troll factory

The Sweden Democrats – a right-wing support party to the Swedish government – runs a secret troll factory, fabricating deepfakes of political opponents and spreading misleading information from more than 20 fake social media profiles. This was revealed by the Swedish TV4 investigative program Kalla Fakta, whose reporter Daniel Andersson had spent 5 months working undercover for the party’s TV station and communications department. The trolls even attack political allies from anonymous accounts, stirring up conflicts in the Swedish government.
Hear how Daniel Andersson worked to gain trust while he documented what was happening in this disinformation factory, among other tools with hidden camera.

Speakers

Daniel Andersson

Investigative reporter, TV4

Daniel Andersson is an investigative journalist on the Swedish TV4 programme Kalla fakta, and most recently worked under cover for several months within the second largest political party in Sweden to expose their use of anonymous accounts to spred misleading information and attack... Read More →

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

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

Software Craftsman, ICIJ

Bruno Thomas is a senior developer at ICIJ. He has worked in computer science for 20 years. He started his career in an IT services company, then he worked for a cultural magazine in France. After that, he was employed for 10 years by the French telecommunications company Orange as a software developer and coach. He learned and implemented agile software development, an approach to software development and a production philosophy that insists on collaborative... Read More →

Soline Ledésert

UX-UI of Datashare and Prophecies, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

UX-UI designer of Datashare, free open-source document-analysis software developed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), as well as Prophecies, free open-source data-checking platform by 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

Data engineer, ICIJ

Data engineer and analyst also specialised in Neo4j graph databases at International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). I enjoy in working in any stage of data ETLs, from start to end.

Saturday June 1, 2024 9:30am - 10:45am CEST
Z2.01 - Mediadrôme

Networking, Presentation

9:30am CEST

SESSION CANCELLED - 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

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

Pascal Hansens

Leïla Minano

Investigate Europe/Disclose/Youpress

Leïla Miñano is an investigative reporter member of Investigate Europe. Based in Paris, 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, "Le Sacrifice... Read More →

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

Storytelling, Presentation

10:30am CEST

Journalism Fair - Meet the organisations that support and promote journalism

Join us in the Media Cafe to learn about and get inspired by several organisations that, in different ways, help our profession move forward.

The Collaborative and Investigative Journalism Initiative (CIJI)
Are you a journalist, investigator, or media professional seeking opportunities to network, collaborate, and learn new methods or tools? The Collaborative and Investigative Journalism Initiative (CIJI) aims to equip independent media outlets and individual journalists with resources, innovative networking infrastructure, and standards-based methods that enable them to practice high-quality, and ethical, and accountable collaborative and investigative journalism. It is carried out in partnership with Tactical Tech (TT), Free Press Unlimited (FPU), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Fundacja Reporterow (FR), OBC Transeuropa (OBCT), and Delfi and aims to provide enabling environments for individual journalists and independent news media outlets to excel, and for start-ups to emerge and succeed.

Global Investigative Journalism Network
The Global Investigative Journalism Network is an international association of nonprofit journalism organizations. From its founding in 2003, GIJN has grown to include 250 member groups in 91 countries. Today, with a staff based in over 20 countries, GIJN works in a dozen languages to link together the world's most enterprising journalists, giving them the tools, technology, and training to go after abuses of power and lack of accountability.

IJ4EU
The Investigative Journalism for Europe fund supports cross-border investigations of public interest in Europe. In 2024/25, IJ4EU will disburse €2 million in grant funding to watchdog journalism, along with practical, editorial and legal support. The fund is managed by a consortium of non-profit organisations led by the International Press Institute and comprising the European Journalism Centre, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom and Arena for Journalism in Europe.

Arena Climate and Collaborative Desk

Arena Climate Network : The Arena Climate Network is an open-access network by and for journalists. It is for journalists who want to focus on all aspects of the climate crisis and who want to do in-depth, investigative work. If you report on the climate issues, you can join our Signal group or find out more about our conference Climate Arena which will take place in 18-19 October in Bologna.

Collaborative Desk:
Cross-border teams face particular challenges: The team works in different countries, editorial offices, organisations or on a freelance basis. Well-organized coordination is, therefore, the key to a successful cross-border collaboration. The Collaborative Desk offers a secure digital workspace and specialised support tailored to the needs of your cross-border team. If you need support for your project meet us at the Journalism Fair or contact us at collaborative-desk@journalismarena.eu.

Netzwerk Recherche
Netzwerk Recherche is the German association for investigative journalists. We do not only want to make journalism better by training journalists in investigative methods and other skills needed for excellent journalism. We also deeply care about the health and safety of journalists. That's why we started the Helpline in 2023 - the first free-to-all peer support hotline for journalists suffering from psychosocial problems, which we are going to present at Dataharvest.

Saturday June 1, 2024 10:30am - 3:15pm CEST
Media forum

Organisational, Presentation

10:45am CEST

Coffee break

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

Organisational

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

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 →

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

Investigative Reporter, Paper Trail Media

Maria Retter is an investigative journalist at paper trail media, an award-winning Munich-based investigative newsroom that exclusively partners with the magazine DER SPIEGEL and the public broadcaster ZDF in Germany, the daily DER STANDARD in Austria and the Swiss Tamedia-Group... Read More →

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

Cross-border, Presentation

11:15am 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

Adrien Sénécat

reporter, Le Monde

Journalist for Le Monde's Les Décodeurs team since 2016, I worked for 6 years on fact-checking. Since january 2022, I mostly work on cross-boarder investigations, such as :- Uber Files (2022) : an investigation coordinated by The Guardian and the ICIJ on the "strategy of chaos... Read More →

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.

Edoardo Anziano

Investigative reporter, IrpiMedia

He has been working as a journalist with Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) since 2022. He holds an Erasmus Mundus Master's degree in Journalism, Media and Globalisation from Aarhus and Amsterdam Universities with a thesis on investigative journalism in Italy. He has covered... Read More →

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

Cross-border, Panel

11:15am CEST

Dubai Unlocked: How 70 media could dive into Dubai's leaked property data

On May 14, more than 70 media outlets around the world published the Dubai Unlocked project, an international investigation into the owners of real estate in Dubai. Based on leaked property records from 2020 and 2022, it’s the first project of its kind to look at ownership in the Emirate on a global scale, identifying scores of property owners we believe it is in the public interest to write about. Cleaning, disseminating and verifying the data was a massive lift! In this session we will explain how we got the data in shape and managed the workflow for such a large international collaboration. Then we will demonstrate how we used the public Dubai Land Department website and scraped third party transaction data to verify the information provided in the leak, using famous drug kingpin Daniel Kinahan as an example.

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 →

Eric Barret

Data Desk Manager, OCCRP

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
Aula Donché - 1.15

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

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 training sessions helps... Read More →

Speakers

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 →

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

FollowTheGrant – data to track conflicts of interest in scientific research

Companies in the medical, food, and environmental sectors are known to spend billions funding research and scientists, thereby biasing researchers and distorting research priorities and results. Where can one find the data on those fundings? Follow the Grant project maintains a comprehensive data catalog, containing several datasets related to potential conflicts of interest in scientific research.
The project's database holds around 5 million full-text articles, 12 million scientists, and 12 million companies and institutions. The datasets are on one hand open-access collections of scientific articles from which we extract the conflict of interest statements for each author, and on the other hand control datasets from sources where authors may have disclosed potential ties to the industry (e.g. payment, conferences) on their own or via a data aggregator. We will guide you through this data catalog and explain what it contains and how you can use it to find your stories. Attendees don’t need to have prior coding knowledge to participate in this session, but some data literacy is recommended.

Speakers

Hristio Boytchev

Science and health reporter, Berlin

Simon Wörpel

Investigative Data Journalist, investigativedata.io

Simon Wörpel is an independent investigative data journalist, researcher and leak librarian. Since 2023 he runs investigativedata.io, an independent tech organization that provides secure infrastructure and data engineering for investigative journalism. He specializes in documents processing, data engineering anddata analysis for journalistic investigations. Simon works for different non-profit organizations... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
2.02

Data buffet, Presentation

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 session will cover best practices for dealing with tricky sites, including coping with captchas, IP blocks, and browser fingerprinting. 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 of these approaches.

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.

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.

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

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 →

Rui Barros

data journalist, Público

Portuguese data journalist currently working at Público.

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

Data skills, Hands-on

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

Environmental Investigative Forum (EIF)

Former IJ manager @CiFAR. Independent investigative journalist and director of @EIF (Environmental Investigative Forum), a global network of environmental investigative journalists. Occasionally fighting against IJ consortiums extracting freelancers ideas.

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

Investigative method, Presentation

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

Jennifer King

Legal expert, European Ombudsman

Legal expert in the Office of the European Ombudsman assigned to the Public Access to Documents and Strategic Inquiries teams

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

Reporter, MLex

I am a Brussels-based journalist, currently covering financial regulation for the financial newswire MLex.I spent several years before that writing about transparency, ethics and lobbying in the EU institutions. I published a book on lobbying in 2023, that was reedited this year.I... Read More →

Margarida Silva

Researcher, SOMO

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

Investigative method, Panel

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
Z2.01 - Mediadrôme

Networking, Roundtable

11:15am 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 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
2.03

Safety, Hands-on

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 with a third party. We will explain how to use it.

3) Using Llama3 for information extraction. Llama3 is an LLM that can be installed on a laptop. We will show how to use it to extract information from court rulings, and compare its performance with ChatGPT4.

4) How to use (and when not to use) ChatGPT4o and Llama3 to investigate a criminal network.

Speakers

Lasse Edfast

Data and Documentaries

I'm producing documentaries for TV and radio, doing science reporting for Swedish Radio and coding for all kinds of research. I'm happy to help with your Python project!

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

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

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.

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 →

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

Cross-border, Presentation

1:45pm CEST

Pitch perfect: Mistakes to avoid when applying for a grant

For many investigative journalists, raising funds for projects is a necessary evil. But what makes the difference between a successful grant application and rejection? In this sessions, we will share common mistakes journalists make when applying for grants, both from the perspective of grant-givers and former grantees. We will discuss what works and what doesn’t and give top tips for what not to do.

Speakers

Timothy Large

Director of Independent Media Programmes, IPI

Timothy Large is head of independent media programmes at the International Press Institute (IPI) in Vienna. He is an award-winning journalist, editor and media development specialist who runs the Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) programme. Every year, IJ4EU provides more... Read More →

Alexandre Brutelle

Environmental Investigative Forum (EIF)

Hazel Sheffield

Coordinator, Arena for Journalism

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

Cross-border, Panel

1:45pm 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?

Moderators

Jonathan Stoneman

Lead trainer, Arena for Journalism in Europe

Speakers

Olaya Argüeso Pérez

Chefredakteurin, CORRECTIV – Recherchen für die Gesellschaft

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 →

Pete Sherlock

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

Cross-border, Panel

1:45pm CEST

Clean data like a pro with OpenRefine

OpenRefine is a free tool to clean and enrich data. You have some csv files and don't know what to do with them? OpenRefine is definitely the good tool to start with! You'll learn the basics with OR, with concrete examples. A two hours drive with this tool that so many journalists have used in their life. Attending this session, the participants will be able to clean a dataset using few built-in command, will learn 2 or 3 basic GREL commands, and how to reconcile data with wikipedia, to enrich their dataset.

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: https://openrefine.org

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

OpenRefine clean data like a pro pdf

Refine scenario pdf

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

Portuguese data journalist currently working at 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

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 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

Reporter, MLex

Alexander Fanta

Follow the Money

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
Z2.01 - Mediadrôme

Networking

1:45pm CEST

Self-defense when dealing with disturbing imagery

Many journalists are exposed to violent material - and not just those on the scene of events themselves. If you are investigating war crimes or sexual violence, you can experience distress without ever leaving your desk.
This session offers a highly practical dive into how to protect yourself against the unwanted impacts of vicarious trauma exposure.
We’ll be talking about workflows: different ways of viewing distressing content, how to configure your machine and what it takes to manage these issues in teams. And we’ll be discussing the fundamentals of self-care that anyone investigating traumatic situations and immersing themselves in disturbing content needs to know.

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 →

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 →

Saturday June 1, 2024 1:45pm - 3:00pm CEST
2.03

Safety, Presentation

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

I am a geographer working as cartographer and journalist at Le Monde with the maps and infographics team since 2018.I work on different subjects and fields, spanning from geopolitics, environment and environmental crimes, climate change, organized crime, conflict and terrorism... Read More →

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 with Ariadne Papagapitos explaining the model developed by Lighthouse Reports.
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

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 →

Speakers

Ariadne Papagapitos

Impact Director, Lighthouse Reports

Ariadne has 15 years of experience building programmes on conflict resolution, governance and human rights in complex contexts for philanthropic institutions and nonprofits. Prior to joining Lighthouse, she was a consultant to foundations working on forced migration, director of the... Read More →

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

Cross-border, Panel

3:30pm CEST

Legislation on whistleblowers and source protection: How to counter the threats

The threats to sources and reporters have taken a close to exponential growth, ranging from harassment on the Internet to SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) or even physical harm and killings.

As one of several pan-European legislative acts aimed at securing journalistic methods and content, an EU directive on protecting whistleblowers has now been in force since 2021. But has it helped journalists and in which way? Are we, as a journalistic community, fine with the current version of the legislation? And what is at stake when the whistleblowers - and our sources in general - are not well protected? Increasingly, critical voices are threatened to silence, even before they become whistleblowers. This session will give an overview of the present legislative protection of whistleblowers and other sources, and pool knowledge and different experiences. Bring your thoughts, experiences, and suggestions to the session!

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 →

Nikolas Leontopoulos

Journalist, Reporters United

Nikolas Leontopoulos is a Greek journalist based in Athens. He is the co-founder of Reporters United, a new centre for investigative journalism and a network of reporters in Greece. Nikolas worked for ten years for the Athens daily Eleftherotypia. He collaborated in investigations with Reuters on banks, shipping and the media in Greece, and reported for the “Outlaw Ocean” New... Read More →

Tom Gibson

European Union Representative, Committee to Protect Journalists

Tom Gibson joined the Committee to Protect Journalists in January 2017 and is CPJ's lead advocate in Brussels covering the institutions of the European Union. He works to strengthen the EU’s positions on press freedom, domestically and internationally. Between 2014 and 2016... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
1.16

Cross-border, Panel

3:30pm CEST

Under the surface: investigating the hidden crisis in Europe's groundwater

For a hundred years, we overexploited groundwater in Europe on an industrial scale. This made Europe prosperous and many European countries became top food producers. But it all came at a cost. Now communities are suffering due to this plunder and the climate crisis is making things worse.
Under the surface investigation mapped the state of exploitation and pollution of groundwater across Europe based on the data analysis and mapping developed by the Spanish newsroom Datadista. In France, Le Monde built on that methodology and crossed the initial data with more granular, national data, to publish a series of maps visualising the current state of the pollution and exploitation of groundwater sources in France.
In this session, we will explain how we worked on the investigation, focusing on the methodology behind Datadista’s data analysis in Europe and Spain, and Le Monde’s in France. The participants will leave the session with a better understanding of the issues surrounding groundwater across the EU and how to investigate them in their own countries.

Moderators

Zeynep Sentek

Project director, Climate Network, Arena for Journalism in Europe

Zeynep Sentek is a Turkish investigative journalist specialising in corruption, human rights, and the environment. She is now leading the climate network of Arena for Journalism in Europe. In this network, Arena facilitates journalists to do cross-border climate investigations and... Read More →

Speakers

Ana Tudela

Project leader / Cofounder, DATADISTA

Financial and investigative journalist with more than twenty years of experience working for national newspapers as El Economista, Público and El Español and former content editor in chief for the spanish edition of Forbes. I pivoted my professional life since 2016 founding my own... Read More →

Raphaëlle Aubert

Data journalist, Le Monde

I'm a Data Journalist at Le Monde, always keen on learning more about data-driven stories, data analysis, and data-visualization techniques. Bonus points if they're in any way related to maps/GIS, help cover climate change and environmental pollution. My most recent crossborder collaborations... Read More →

Antonio Delgado

Data journalist, DATADISTA

Léa Sanchez

Data journalist, Le Monde

I am a journalist and developer at Le Monde. I specialize in data analysis and data-driven articles, focusing on environmental and social issues.

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
1.14

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

Jonathan Stoneman

Lead trainer, Arena for Journalism in Europe

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

Freelance data journalist

Eric Barret

Data Desk Manager, OCCRP

Duck DB for data journalism DH 2024 pdf

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

Science and data journalist, Ph.D in Microbiology. Tow-Knight fellow 2019 Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY. Co-founder of non-profit media centre Facta.eu and of science communication agency formicablu.Freelance chief editor at Il BO Live and presenter of Radio3Scienza at RAI... Read More →

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

Marcus Lindemann is the managing author of Marcus Lindemann is the managing author of autoren(werk) and has been producing magazine programmes and documentaries for ARD and ZDF with his own company since 2000, mainly on consumer topics, often with a hidden camera. After the series... Read More →

Speakers

Aleksandr Atasuntsev

Investigative Reporter

Aleksandr Atasuntsev is a freelance investigative reporter. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, he has been investigating how Russia circumvents Western sanctions and obtains the components it needs to produce weapons. Has participated in several crossborder investigations and... Read More →

Claus Hesseling

Data Journalist, freelance Journalist

Claus Hesseling works as a data journalist and trainer. He has been realising data journalism projects at NDR in Hamburg since 2013 and advises journalists on data issues. He designs and runs data journalism workshops and teaches journalists the basics of programming (including at... 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

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

Daniel O'Huiginn

Freelance

Programmer, working freelance on data-journalism topicsCurrent projects: ship tracking, LLMs as editorial toolsPast interests: tax havens, company investigations, arms trade

Saturday June 1, 2024 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
Aula 0.10

Investigative method, Hands-on

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
Z2.01 - Mediadrôme

Networking, Presentation

3:30pm 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 3:30pm - 4:45pm CEST
2.02

Safety, Presentation

4:45pm CEST

Coffee break

Saturday June 1, 2024 4:45pm - 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

Data developer, IlSole24Ore

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

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 →

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

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

OpenRefine beyond data cleaning

This workshop will introduce you to the use of OpenRefine for automating purposes including OSINT, using concrete examples. Participants will learn how to import some OSINT-obtained json data and map them, use APIs to collect data, scrape websites using external tools and TOR. Participants will be able to automate an OSINT task, replicate scenarios, and protect their privacy.
After attending this session, OpenRefine user will be able to interact with APIs with Openrefine, clean up json files and have a better understanding of the infinite possibilities of openRefine.
A basic understanding of what command-line tools are, is a plus. The participants should be confortable with OpenRefine (UI, sorting, filtering..). This is not a beginner session.

If you attend this session with your personal computer, please read carefully the installation requirements here : https://git.oh-w.tf/herve/DataHarvest24-OpenRefine-beyond-data-cleaning You'll need docker on your machine.

Speakers

Anuška Delić

founder, Oštro

Hervé Letoqueux

OpenFacto

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
2.1

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

Head the datajournalism lab at the local newspaper iTromsø. We use AI to make new editorial tools and products for 70 newspapers in the Polaris media group ASA.Interested in Agentic RAG, LLM, Nocode AI, Recommender systems. Member of the AI Journalism lab at J+ CUNY. Open for Ai... Read More →

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
1.16

Instant inspiration, Presentation

5:15pm 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 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
3.02

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
Z2.01 - Mediadrôme

Networking, Roundtable

5:15pm CEST

Have you been SLAPPed?

Have you been SLAPPed yet? SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation“ which means law suits filed by rich and powerful people to stop or intimidate watchdog journalism. It happens all over Europe and the world, but not least to smaller independent newsrooms with limited resources. In this session, two reporters tell you how they and their newsrooms got SLAPPed and how they remained standing – and the Committee to Protect Journalists give advice on how you can avoid SLAPPs, and what you can do if they hit you anyway.

Moderators

Staffan Dahllöf

Reporter, Investigative Reporting Denmark

Speakers

Cecilia Anesi

Co-founder, IrpiMedia

Cecilia Anesi is an investigative reporter with IrpiMedia, the investigative media outlet of Italy's investigative journalism centre IRPI (Investigative Reporting Project Italy) which she co-funded in 2012. IRPI is a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and the OCCRP... Read More →

Nikolas Leontopoulos

Journalist, Reporters United

Tom Gibson

European Union Representative, Committee to Protect Journalists

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

Safety, Panel

5:15pm CEST

Do interactive data visualisations make sense (and when)?

Since COVID-19, international media have been flooded with dashboards, interactive calculators, maps, and news games. Yet, there's almost no research or proof, of whether this actually makes sense! For which investigations does it make sense to develop interactive stories instead of static graphics? What kind of interactives do users actually engage with? Why do they do that? And do they actually like them?

The presentation will showcase the scarce research that has already been done on journalistic data visualization, along with examples and insights from the first studies the presenters have conveyed on user interaction with such graphics. We go through the different types of interactives, evaluating their usefulness for different scenarios. We will summarize UI rules that every (data)journalist should respect when developing interactives.

Speakers

Hendrik Lehmann

Head of Innovation Lab, Tagesspiegel

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 →

Saturday June 1, 2024 5:15pm - 6:30pm CEST
2.02

Storytelling, 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

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 and download Dataiku here. Please sign up for a 14 days free test version of Dataiku account before the class.

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

Environmental Investigative Forum (EIF)

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

Data Journalist, freelance 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

Investigative Reporter, CORRECTIV

Till Eckert specializes in OSINT, data and cross-border research. He has spent years investigating the impact of disinformation on democracies, conducted unprecedented data research to show how Instagram has become a tool for right-wing extremists and exposed Chinese influence peddling... 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

Lars Bové

Journalist, De Tijd

Lars Bové has been a journalist for the newspaper De Tijd since 2003. As an investigative journalist, Lars has already revealed several scandals in Belgium. He also regularly collaborates with foreign media on international journalistic projects, including in collaboration with ICIJ... Read More →

Raphaëlle Aubert

Data journalist, Le Monde

Maxime Vaudano

Head of cross-border investigations, Le Monde - Les Décodeurs

I am the head of cross-border investigations at Le Monde (France). My keywords are: data, open source, FOIA and collaborations. In the past, I have contributed to multiple investigations on tax havens (Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, OpenLux, Cyprus Confidential...). I have coordinated... 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

Portuguese data journalist currently working at Público.

Krisztián Szabó

data journalist, Átlátszó, ATLO

Sunday June 2, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
2.08

Data skills, Hands-on

11:15am CEST

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

This workshop aims to equip attendees with the skills needed to run their code on a computer hosted in the cloud. This can be a useful skill for a number of reasons:

when your code needs to run for a long time (such as archiving tasks or scraping data that changes regularly)
Downloading a giant dataset without losing internet part way through (e.g. large data leaks)
When you need a computer that has a different operating system/is faster/has more disk space than your personal machine
When you want to inspect some suspicious files without risking your own computer

In this session we'll cover the basics of how to set up a server and run your code on it. Participants are welcome to bring their own project to run, otherwise a sample project will be provided.
Some experience of using the command line is recommended.

Speakers

Vangelis Katsikaros

Head of Infrastructure, Adzuna

Philip McMahon

Software Developer, The Guardian

Sunday June 2, 2024 11:15am - 12:30pm CEST
2.09

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