Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

In our digitally connected world, perpetrators feel so safe online that they build their networks openly: on public-access porn websites and messenger apps such as Telegram. Our investigation for STRG_F/NDR in Germany uncovered an international rape network that had formed on porn websites and in dozens of private chat groups on Telegram. One group had more than 70,000 members.

Users exchange detailed information on how to drug and rape women who are already close to them, such as their wives, girlfriends, sisters, or mothers, without them noticing. The rapists share videos and photos of the assaults online. One man from Germany drugged and raped his wife for more than 15 years and generated millions of views with the footage. Our investigation triggered a police investigation, and he was stopped.

We'll share how we began investigating these networks, how we gained access to them, how we investigated the users for years by also going undercover, what tools we used, what ethical and moral challenges we have faced, and how we kept an overview of all the footage we documented and saved over the years.

We will address:
- How do you conduct online research in criminal networks? (Structures, dynamics, and mechanisms)
- How do you gain access to them?  (User's communication and behaviour) 
- What opportunities and limitations did we encounter? (Laws and journalists' rights, ethical and moral responsibilities)
- When should you consider undercover research, and what can it look like? (Journalistic standards and guidelines)
- How do you protect your own mental health when confronted with disturbing content?

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, many European countries have increased their defence spending and awarded large new contracts to arms companies. Beneficiaries include US corporations such as Lockheed, as well as European firms such as BAE Systems, Airbus, Rheinmetall, or Leonardo. At the same time, these companies are making money by exporting weapons to authoritarian regimes, and their weapons could end up on the battlefields of Libya or Yemen. Some of these companies have continued to support Israel in its destruction of Gaza by selling weapons to the country.
How can such companies be investigated? Whistleblowers can occasionally help journalists to expose dubious deals and hidden manoeuvres. But arms deals can also be investigated without the help of an insider. Videos showing military vehicles can be geolocated. Satellite pictures reveal the locations of naval vessels. Tracking websites allow you to follow the routes of warships and aeroplanes. Company employees reveal the military projects they are working on on LinkedIn.

This presentation will demonstrate how open-source methods can be used to investigate the arms industry. Drawing on specific examples from recent investigations, it will show how these methods can be employed to shed light on the activities of companies such as a European missile-maker that supplied Israel with bombs used in Gaza, German engine manufacturers whose products are being used in Russian and Chinese warships, Turkey's breaches of the arms embargo in Libya, and the role of Airbus, as well as French-made warships in the war zone around Yemen. The presentation will also highlight the activities of a German arms giant Rheinmetall,, which sent personnel through an embargoed port in Eritrea to assist with the repair of Emirati naval guns in the Red Sea.

The Great Firewall, censorship, and language barriers make open source research on China really difficult, if not impossible. In this session, we aim not only to make you aware of obstacles you may face, but to show you solutions and strategies, especially for journalists and researchers working from outside China who don't speak the language.

We’ll show you the research resources, toolbox and we'll share tips on:

1) how to navigate Chinese social media: WeChat, Douyin, Rednote and others,
2) how to reconcile information inconsistencies in English and Chinese,
3) how to read the ownership of Chinese companies: private, state owned and central government enterprises,
4) mobile device setup and translation applications.

Do you know what the telling signs of "non-authentic behaviour" - bots - are on social media platforms? This practical, hands-on presentation is for journalists interested in investigating bots across platforms - from Telegram and YouTube to TikTok. We'll use data research on bot networks and coordinated activity to learn how to identify bots, and discuss practical stories one can develop based on the data found. We will also give practical examples stemming from our research in Ukraine and Moldova, and present some insights into bot campaigns ahead of the June 2026 election in Armenia.

A key part of the session will focus on how things are changing with the rise of generative AI and the early shift toward more agent-like systems: what this means for bots, coordination, and the limits of traditional detection methods. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a clearer sense of how large-scale CIB operations can look in practice, and how to start identifying and documenting them across different platforms. The goal is to leave the session with concrete story ideas, investigative ideas, and practical methodological knowledge.

No programming skills are required to take part in the workshop, but prior experience with collecting and analyzing data from social media platforms will help participants get the most out of the session.

Everyone knows that you can track planes online. But how exactly do you use plane tracking tools, and how can they help you with investigative research in particular? That's what this workshop is all about. It's aimed at journalists who have only ever tracked their vacation flights, but it also offers tips and tricks for more experienced colleagues. (It can get a little nerdy at times, but hopefully never boring.)

This session will tackle questions such as:
-How do you use flight tracking sites for research?
-Can you really track all planes? And what do you do if they don't want a flight to be found?
-What are the advantages and disadvantages of different platforms?
-How does flight data help to verify other information from your research?
-What are the biggest stumbling blocks, and what do you need to watch out for?
-How do you access older data?
-And why are plane spotters your best friends...

The tools of the trade are explained with practical examples from real research cases. These include Russian sabotage and hijackings, kings on their travels, and smuggled wild animals.

Industry biases science by funding research projects and organisations, as well as individual scientists. In this session, we will explore how to investigate this bias, presenting different approaches, story angles, data sources, and methods. We will focus on investigations covering food, tobacco, environment, and medicine. The attendees will get an understanding of the importance of commercial influence on science, ways to investigate the subject, as well as possible pitfalls. 

Reporting online today, journalists have to battle astroturf campaigns, fake news sites and sketchy shell companies to find out who is behind the story. It frequently leads to a frustratingly common question: who is behind this website?

Popular tools and approaches to investigating websites have been less reliable lately. There's more opaqueness in areas where there should be more transparency; crypto payments add a layer of confusion, and generative AI makes it easy for adversarial actors to operate hundreds of websites.

Using a range of OSINT tools and real-world investigations, we will walk you through investigating the provenance and ownership of websites: identifying the scope and scale of the network it belongs to — if any? Who’s behind the site, now and in the past? Who are the main actors promoting this website? Is it AI slop? Are foreign actors likely behind the domain?

While it is not always possible to fully unmask the owner of a site, using a thorough checklist of tools and techniques that we have used in real-world investigations we can help you make sure to reveal as much as possible about a website, and potentially uncover important clues. We will also walk you through how to conduct these investigations safely depending on your threat model, and how to document your findings reliably.

 This session is suitable for beginners and doesn't assume existing technical knowledge.

Analysts estimate that at least $28 billion tied to illicit activity has flowed into cryptocurrency exchanges over the last two years. ICIJ's Coin Laundry investigation, in collaboration with 37 media partners, exposed part of this shadow financial system, collecting dozens of cryptocurrency wallet addresses and uncovering hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of illicit funds linked to suspected criminals, including a Cambodian conglomerate that facilitated money laundering for hackers and scam compound operators.

In this hands-on session, the panelists will explain how any reporter can use open source resources as well as advanced techniques to investigate major crypto exchanges, find leads, and "follow the crypto." The session will blend an intro showing the kinds of stories you can do on crypto, starting from scratch, the kinds of tools you can use, and then show how we use those tools to compile the data for analysis.

Algorithms are everywhere, but they're still extremely opaque. They affect us more and more, and often have a meaningful impact on our daily lives—especially when the public administration uses them. But it's incredibly hard to 1) get data and information about how they work, 2) understand it, and 3) explain it in a simple, impactful way.

In this session, we'll share different techniques that Civio has used to research and report on algorithms. We'll look into the ways in which one can crack open the black box of algorithms, from FOIA requests to court battles, reverse engineering to scientific reports. We will also explain how we analyse their outputs and how we make reporting that is often technical and complex more palatable for our readers. In the presentation, we will mention some particular examples from our reporting on algorithms, such as exposing facial recognition in doctor offices, algorithm bias when it comes to cancer detection, and a silly lie detector used by police.

We'll also talk about how we went to the Supreme Court to get the code of a system which decides -wrongly- who receives subsidies, and who doesn't. This session is suitable for beginners - you don't need to have had any experience reporting on algorithms in order to attend and follow the session.

In this session, we will show how satellite imagery can support investigations into war, militarisation, and environmental changes. The methods discussed are applicable to climate investigations such as land-use change, infrastructure expansion, and environmental damage.

We will cover:
-Getting the image: How to choose between open and commercial satellite imagery based on editorial needs, such as resolution, timeliness, licensing, and costs—and what to be aware of when downloading an image.
-Analysing the image: Measuring distances and object sizes in images (e.g., airplanes), verifying the time an image was taken, and merging different satellite images.
-Presenting the image: Tools to tell stories with satellite images so that readers can understand them intuitively—for example, through before–and–after comparisons, annotations, colour correction, sliders, GIFs, and scrolly-telling, with a focus on mobile-first presentation.

The session is intended for reporters, editors, and visual journalists. No prior experience with satellite imagery is required.