Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Investigace.cz has been monitoring TikTok in the Czech Republic for foreign influence operations for several years. and has learned to track the Czech TikTok space systematically.

In this hands-on session, they will share the lessons learnt with the participants:

-How to use scraping-as-a-service tools to collect TikTok data without coding
-How to decode TikTok URL hashes to extract hidden metadata (such as exact publication timestamps)
-How to work with the TikTok Research API
-How to think beyond simple metrics (views, likes, followers) and understand what TikTok data can and cannot tell you about influence operations

Participants will leave with practical skills and a realistic understanding of the limits of TikTok analysis. One doesn't need to be a data journalist to attend this session, but an understanding of how scraping works and basic data skills will be helpful!

This session is based on a case from Serbia, where we managed to identify a person whose identity Serbian authorities and pro-government media actively tried to hide. Starting from a blurred face in a leaked video, we combined basic OSINT with business registries, social networks, geolocation, face recognition tools, dark web email searches, and simple AI-assisted image analysis. We will walk the audience through each phase of the process,  and explain what worked, what failed, and how one can verify findings when evidence is being altered or erased in real time.

Attendees will leave with a practical workflow they can reuse in their own investigations: how to move from a fragment of visual evidence to a confirmed identity, how to cross-check business data with social platforms, how to use face search and morphological comparison safely, how to track digital behavior after supposed arrests, and how to document disappearing online traces before they are wiped. The goal is to share a method that can travel across borders and work in any country where power structures try to keep people invisible.