Basic data tools for journalists
 

data

information

knowledge

insight

wisdom

conspiracy

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user friendly data

xls
xlsx
csv
tsv
sps
json
xml
kml
geojson
shp
geotiff
pdf

jpeg

types of data

• search

• download

• conversion

• storage and preparation

• analysis

• presentation

• What is useful/usable/free today, may not be useful/usable/free tomorrow
   

• Criminal organizations and state agencies are constantly learning
   

• This is only a collection, there are other tools which can be used for the same purposes
   

• There is no Swiss knife tool, and this is good!
   

• Many times you have to use different tools for every little step
  ​

• Google is your friend, and you are not alone - there are hundreds of forums where experts discuss the solutions for specific questions and problems
   

some remarks

search

• Google advanced search, Google search operators

• DuckDuckGo

• Facebook Graph Search / Facebook ID

• Whois https://whois.domaintools.com/

•  

• Databases

• Google Dataset Search

• OCCRP Aleph

• OCCRP ID

• Vesselfinder

• Flightradar24

• Radarbox

• Local databases (public procurement datasets, company registry database)

processed data

download

• Google Spreadsheet Importhtml=

• ​Google Scraper

• Import.io

conversion

• PDFTables https://pdftables.com/

• Tabula https://tabula.technology/

• Aconvert https://www.aconvert.com/

• Zamzar https://www.zamzar.com/

• Mygeodata https://mygeodata.cloud/

storage and preparation

• Excel

• Numbers

• Openrefine https://openrefine.org/download.html

• Tableau Prep https://www.tableau.com/products/prep/download

analysis

• Excel

• Numbers

• Mysql

• ​Tableau Public https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/

• ​Power BI

• IBM Watson 

presentation

• Google Data Studio​

• Flourish, Datawrapper, RAWGraphs, PlotDB, Plotly, Highcharts

• Unfolded, QGIS, Mapbox / Google/Google Earth/Timelapse https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/

• VIS https://github.com/alephdata/datadesktop, Gephi, Cytoscape, Cosmograph

• Chrono

• Knightlab Tools https://knightlab.northwestern.edu/projects/

Mapping information - diagrammatic thinking

• table = visual representation
• Canva
• Lucid
• Gephi
• Cytoscape
• VIS Dashboard

Mapping information - chronologic order

• Chronoflo
• Sutori
• Knightlab Timeline

Mapping information - spatial order

• Google My Maps
• Google Earth
• Carto
• Flourish
• Kepler/Unfolded
• ArcGIS Storymap
• Knightlab Storymap