We’ve just finished working with a partner to create an introductory guide to investigative web research.
As part of our aim to encourage shared, open documentation about the use of technology in social change, we’re publishing it so that other people can use it too.
The guide is designed for researchers, activists and journalists who need to collect online information about people, entities or events and use it for investigative research or advocacy. If you’re tracking corporate ownership, monitoring corruption or mapping political influence, this guide is for you.
Read our guide to investigative web research
It’s designed to be practical and straightforward, pointing you to more detailed resources and giving you the context to decide what tools you might need.
As part of our philosophy of reuse and replication, we publish all our research and guides in the same open format on our Library. The Library aims to help build our collective knowledge of how technology can help activists and organisations. It has guides in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Bahasa and English, is responsive (unlike a PDF), and is designed to let people find and reuse content quickly and easily. Topics range from drones and messaging apps to participatory budgeting – and there are more guides coming soon!
Check out more guides from The Engine Room’s Library
The Library code is available on Github, and all the content is Creative Commons-licensed. We’ll keep you updated whenever new guides are added. If you’d like to chat about investigative web research techniques and how they could help your work, get in touch.