Elections Guide for Investigative Reporters

"Investigative reporting has consistently served as an effective check against election abuses, and, yes, has even played a direct role in saving democracies."



This online guide for investigative reporters explores some common election threats and offers tools and techniques to expose the bad actors behind them and dig into almost any election or political campaign. Among other tools and resources, it offers simple online techniques for identifying and connecting people behind fear-mongering campaign sites, as well as open-source tools that can search political ads on Facebook, track police audio chatter, dig into extremist and anti-democratic social media channels, track illicit campaign financing, and automatically filter mountains of data.



As explained in the guide, "Global elections in the year ahead [2024] - including presidential, legislative, and regional polls in at least 60 countries - will affect more citizens than in any previous year, and will likely reset humanity's liberty compass for years ahead. Elections face increasingly common threats, including disinformation campaigns, foreign interference, voter suppression, rising authoritarianism, campaign corruption, minority disenfranchisement, and violence and intimidation.



Meanwhile, the state of democracy around the world has steadily eroded in the past two decades as 'elected autocrats' consolidate their power through corrupt alliances with oligarchs and fellow authoritarians, misinformation and hate speech is prioritized over facts by social media algorithms, and historically democratic governments use xenophobic fears and conspiracy theories as pretexts for suppressing civil liberties and the press. Ominously, the world has also witnessed the invasion of a major Eastern European democracy - Ukraine - by Russia, an autocratic regime, as well as the opposite case: the invasion and occupation of an independent territory by Israel, a democracy."



With the support of case studies from around the world, this online guide is designed to assist independent media and watchdog journalists to dig beneath the surface of increasingly precarious elections and publish stories that can make an impact.



It consists of the following five parts:  

 

• Introduction: Where to Begin - In this big-picture introduction, the guide offers a preview of the chapters and shares some research and insights from expert sources that point to effective techniques in getting investigating findings to break through tribal "information bubbles". They include, for example, the use of infographics, collaborating with other newsrooms, and ways to access young voters.
• Chapter 1: New Digging Tools - Based on input from journalists and elections experts around the world, this chapter shares some reliable digital tools that can help most campaign investigations as well as a list of strategies to consider. It also provides an in-depth profile of a featured election digging technique known as "the Pub/UA method". This technique can identify hidden individuals behind harmful election-related websites, which requires no digital skills more advanced than "Control-F" keyword search commands.
• Chapter 2: Preparing for Elections - This chapter lists tools and resources for understanding the rules of elections, and how journalists can keep themselves, their sources, and their data safe while finding leads and sources. It offers numerous safety resources for female-identifying reporters facing gendered harassment, supported by a case study from India. It also offers an expanded investigative topics list for elections, such as dark public relations (PR), militia intimidation, speech deep-fakes, swatting, and listening tools for troll campaigns.
• Chapter 3: Investigating Candidates - This chapter shares tools for uncovering candidates' personal and online histories, hidden assets, and contacts for people who really know them. It also shares a methodology for performing due diligence on candidates' backgrounds based on a Brazilian case study. Techniques include, for example, those used to check for early academic plagiarism and "stolen valour" claims, as well as tools to check candidates' claimed travel histories - including a new app that maps the location of their restaurant reviews - and to track their usernames across 600 websites.
• Chapter 4: Political Messaging and Disinformation - This chapter contains tips for tracking political conversations, campaign advertisements, and disinformation narratives online. It shares step-by-step methods for digging into platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Twitter (now "X"), where citizens discuss everything from important policy issues to bizarre conspiracies to plots to violently overturn elections. In addition, it looks at the cross-border project Digital Mercenaries, which exposed the inner workings of election influencers throughout Latin America, and illustrates the many benefits of collaboration.

This reporting guide has been updated and revised for the 2024 election cycle. It was originally published in 2022. Click here for the previous 2022 version of this guide.