Dataharvest 2025 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Data and visualisations are now everpresent in journalism, and particularly in investigations (which rely more and more on obtaining and publishing data) and in cross-border collaborative projects (where often "data" is the common language spoken by all media partners). Additionally, diverse software and platforms provide us with different opportunities to reach our audiences, who are also more and more used to seeing data visualisations. Visual storytelling helps to reach people beyond traditional media, opening up social media and artistic platforms to journalistic narratives, and sparking curiosity in younger audiences.

In this session we'll ask how we can keep innovating and be creative in how we produce and publish data visualisations, and how we can benefit from developing interactive visualisations and even simple online games that push the boundaries of data storytelling, creating more engaging and playful experiences.

Come to this session to get inspired and learn and get to think of creative and innovative ways to publish and present data from your investigations. And bring your own ideas and questions, so that we all can learn together!

Journalism is almost never delivered live. These days, always there seems to be a screen between the journalists and the audience. But before the online and digital world swallowed everything, journalism reached people through the pages of a newspaper or magazine, on a TV screen, or on a crackling radio (if you are too young to know what we're talking about, ask your parents).

It doesn't have to be like that — even today, when most people start feeling sick and anxious at the mere thought of being away from their smartphones for a few hours.

There are offline and in-person ways for us to present, deliver and disseminate our investigations and other reporting. And there seems to be a growing appetite among audiences and (some) media organisations to explore ways to get together and experience journalistic storytelling live.

In this session, three journalists and a moderator who've been experimenting with different offline and in-person ways of journalistic storytelling will share their experiences, the lessons learnt, and how it feels to have your audience look you in the eye and talk to you in person as you present or deliver your story.

This session explores the powerful potential of visualising qualitative data – interviews, archives, testimonies, police reports, and more – within investigative journalism. We’ll delve into how rich sources, often lacking geographical locations, can be transformed into compelling maps, diagrams, and visual narratives, offering unique insights into complex stories.

Moving beyond traditional hard data visualisation, this approach can reveal hidden patterns and connections within qualitative information and illuminate the human dimension of investigations, adding depth and clarity to narratives that might otherwise remain opaque. We’ll also examine how combining qualitative visualisation using hard data, such as satellite analysis, can strengthen the accuracy and impact of investigative reporting.

During this session, Federico Caruso (editorial coordinator, European Data Journalism Network) and Riccardo Pravettoni (journalist cartographer, Le Monde) will explain the mechanisms and choices involved in creating some of Le Monde’s most impactful visual stories, drawing from examples such as the Mazan trial, Saydnaya prison, and events in Lebanon and Gaza. We’ll examine how they analyse information, select sources, and craft the aesthetic look of these formats.

No prior knowledge or expertise is required to attend. You also won’t need to bring any specific materials.

You will leave this session with a better understanding on how to:
- Identify and extract valuable information from qualitative sources
- Apply various visualisation techniques to represent this data effectively
- Combine qualitative and quantitative data for stronger investigative narratives
- Appreciate the importance of scale and aesthetic choices in visual storytelling
- Gain a practical understanding of the processes involved in creating compelling visual journalism

Most investigative journalists have by now become used to getting data and building datasets and databases as part of their research. And that's also very often the case in cross-border collaborative investigations, where data is normally the common language of the journalists and media participating (alongside English).

What is less common is then publishing or making those databases accessible, and using them as part of the storytelling when presenting and disseminating our investigations. And that's a shame, because the databases behind our research can provide us with an opportunity to reach and engage our audiences in interesting and novel ways.

In this session,investigative journalists, from two very different contexts, Serbia and Switzerland, will present how they went about compiling complex databases as part of their investigations, and then making those databases publicly available and accessible to their audiences, as well as using the databases as part of their storytelling.

Come to this session to get inspired and learn how you can compile and use databases, not only as part of your research, but also making them part of the story, increasing the reach and impact of your investigations.

In the last decade or so, podcasts have gone from niche to widespread media format and are now a well-established, mature medium. Podcasts bring their own opportunities and challenges and are particularly suited to long reportage and investigations.

In this session, we'll hear from two journalists with experience in producing independent investigative podcasts in two European countries: Portugal and Poland.

How do journalists and newsrooms come up with topics for an investigative podcast? What are the key issues to consider? What are the key pros and cons for independent newsrooms wanting to produce investigative podcasts? How do you conduct interviews about complicated issues and get people to be candid on the record? How do you narrate investigations that rely on documents and can include complex, abstract issues? What lessons have we learned from stories that didn't work out particularly well?