Lessons from Building an Online Toolkit to Aid Open-Source Investigations

Affiliate and former fellow Johanna Wild details her efforts (undertaken during her fellowship term) to make it simpler for journalists to find and use open-source research tools. She built Bellingcat's Online Investigation Toolkit to organize online tools including ones for satellite imagery, social media, and archiving. She shares four key lessons she learned in building the Toolkit with Nieman. "While many providers use marketing language to present their tools in a solely positive light, we made sure to identify a tool’s potential weaknesses and limitations in addition to its usefulness."