Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Investigating migration is becoming a difficult beat. Sources are vulnerable, data is scarce, and governments and agencies routinely block access to information. 

In this session, two journalists with extensive experience on migration reporting will share how they navigate these barriers to still produce rigorous, impactful reporting. 

Nidžara Ahmetašević from Bosnia and Lydia Emmanouilidou from Greece will bring complementary perspectives shaped by their respective contexts, from the Balkan route to the Aegean. Together, they will walk you through their recent investigations (both nominated for the European Press Prize) that exposed systemic failures despite limited access. You will leave this session with strategies for investigating migration using alternative sources, document trails, and innovative reporting when official channels remain closed.

Stories that will be referenced in this session: 
Mines, memory, and migration on Bosnia’s perilous border, by Nidžara Ahmetašević
Unaccompanied children sleep on the floor in shifts in Greece’s ‘Model Camps’. The EU is aware. by Lydia Emmanouilidou, et al.

This session will explore a new method: scraping on-screen text, using immense volumes of videos—from police dashcam videos to 24-hour news TV channels to fuel your investigation.

Antoine Schirer, a designer turned journalist, will share the methods and scripts he used for a 2025 Reporters Without Borders investigation to dissect months of programs of the controversial French news channel CNews.

Using Python, OCR, and fuzzy string matching, more than a million news banners were analysed to expose how the channel gets around broadcasting legislation.

We will look at other examples and invite you to discuss how to be creative with unusual - even non-existent datasets.