Dataharvest 2026 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

The session will reflect on Swiss newsroom WAV Collective's year-long collaborative investigative projects – Invisible Walls and Big Business at the Borders – looking at automated border systems across Europe and asking who benefits from the push in AI in migration and border control.

Their reporting combined on-the-ground investigation in Greece with policy research in Brussels and institutional analysis in Switzerland and the U.K. They will give a step-by-step explanation on how they traced flows of money, data and accountability across borders and institutions.

What they'll cover in this talk:
- how to understand the systems, tools and implications of AI (even if you’re not a techie!).
- how to distinguish between proposed capabilities, funded projects, and implemented systems when it comes to reporting on tech.
- how to understand the functions of such systems, instead of relying on labels.
- And how to dissect the language that is often used to obfuscate real-world implications of tech.

Participants will learn how cross-border, collaborative teams can tackle investigations of complex, opaque systems that operate in regulatory grey areas and are often deliberately fragmented. Insights from this session will not only be valuable to colleagues working on similar topics, but useful to anyone investigating fragmented yet connected systems across different countries.