Most published open source research consists of user-generated content which has been verified, with analysis corroborating the date, time and location of capture. Once solved and explained, the process of geolocation can seem intuitive. Yet what’s less visible and less widely discussed are the moments of doubt during any challenging geolocation task and the instances in which content cannot ultimately be verified.
In this three-part series, we focus on key elements behind the successful crowd-sourcing project, Decode Surveillance NYC, including the design of the data collection, early analysis, and what it means to build community online.
In this three-part series, we focus on key elements behind the successful crowd-sourcing project, Decode Surveillance NYC, including the design of the data collection, early analysis, and what it means to build community online.
Translation affects who can access our published work and who – through the decision to work in certain languages and not others – is included in the research. Yet, the decision to translate and how we handle translation rarely features in project methodologies and, unlike other tools or technologies, its impact can be hard to measure.
In this three-part series, we focus on key elements behind the successful crowd-sourcing project, Decode Surveillance NYC, including the design of the data collection, early analysis, and what it means to build community online.
This third and final post in a series on conducting online inquiries explores the importance of researching digital media landscapes, constructing effective keyword searches, and documenting the online inquiry process.
A combination of the summer in the Northern Hemisphere and many of the team finally taking leave has meant that we haven’t posted on Citizen Evidence Lab for several weeks. While we finish-up various posts that are under production, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on how this blog enriches our work, and the publishing pipeline that ensures the responsibility and labour of writing is shared between team members.
In the second of this three-part guide examining open source information gathering, we look at the basic tools used for online inquiries, selecting the best ones for the job, and how to use them most effectively.
In the Evidence Lab within Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Programme, we often need to use maps both to present the findings of our research and as an exploratory tool to help geolocate audio-visual material. These uses could include plotting geospatial data on a map in order to visualize its geographic distribution, for example, or exploring satellite imagery to match geographical features to those appearing in video footage.
Five videos portraying a gruesome series of events appeared online in early March. First published by Tigrai Media House, a media outlet affiliated with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), they depict the detention and eventual execution of a group of unarmed men purportedly in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, where a non-international armed conflict has been taking place since November 2020. Under international humanitarian law, the executions depicted in the videos would constitute the war crime of murder. The events were documented by a member of the Ethiopian military turned whistle-blower using a camera phone. Four of the clips show the same location, while the fifth shows a different location with men held captive by Ethiopian troops.
Estimated time: 1 hour
In the first of this three-part guide examining open source information gathering, we look at the potential for information bias to influence an investigation and the importance of mitigating such biases when designing an effective research methodology