Devid Ilievski – Multiple Journalism

Newsrooms embrace AI for efficiency but neglect innovation

Devid Ilievski — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 23:06:57 +0000

Published on 15 October 2026 by the Knight Center for the Future of News at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, The News + AI Field Report examines 160 AI projects developed by 101 US news organisations between 2022 and 2025.

The research, conducted by journalism scholar and media innovation expert Djordje Padejski, provides one of the first systematic overviews of how newsrooms have integrated AI into their operations. Its central finding is that news organisations have largely adopted AI to “do what they were already doing but faster”, while overlooking opportunities to develop new journalistic products, strengthen audience relationships and rethink their business models.

Automation dominates newsroom innovation

The study identifies six patterns in newsroom AI adoption. Most projects focus on automating routine editorial tasks, including summarisation, transcription, translation, drafting and workflow management. These applications improve efficiency but rarely change how journalism is produced, distributed or funded.

However, some initiatives demonstrate how AI can expand journalism’s capabilities. Automated monitoring of public meetings, large-scale document analysis and investigative research tools enable journalists to identify stories and investigate information that would otherwise be difficult to process.

Another emerging category treats “journalism as a utility”, developing AI-powered services that help audiences navigate everyday civic issues. Examples include tools providing information about property taxes, evictions, restaurant inspections and immigration. Although relatively uncommon, these experiments demonstrate how news organisations can move beyond publishing articles towards providing practical information services.

Business innovation remains underdeveloped

One of the study’s most striking findings concerns the gap between the industry’s concerns about AI and its actual investments.

Newsroom leaders interviewed for the research expressed widespread anxiety about declining website traffic, changing audience behaviour and the potential disruption of traditional revenue models. Nevertheless, relatively few AI projects focus on subscriptions, fundraising or developing alternative business models.

The research also identifies risks associated with audience-facing AI applications. While internal production tools generally operate with limited public exposure, AI-generated summaries and news chatbots can introduce factual errors and reputational damage.

Opportunities for smaller newsrooms

Despite these challenges, the report suggests that technological barriers to experimentation are decreasing. According to the researchers, “the barrier to building with AI has dropped”, allowing journalists and smaller teams to develop prototypes without extensive technical resources.

Yet AI adoption remains concentrated among major national news organisations, well-funded digital publishers and selected nonprofit newsrooms. For journalism innovators, the research highlights a fundamental distinction between adopting AI to increase productivity and using it to create new forms of public value.

The study suggests that the most promising initiatives are not necessarily those employing the most sophisticated technology, but those addressing clearly defined journalistic problems.

To make these experiments accessible, the researchers have published an interactive database featuring all 160 projects, allowing journalists, researchers and newsroom leaders to explore applications, compare approaches and identify opportunities for innovation.

Foreign disinformation networks target Spain’s elections

Devid Ilievski — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 17:57:14 +0000

The research reveals how Russian-aligned actors, foreign-operated Facebook pages, artificial intelligence and coordinated social media campaigns are being used to spread fabricated political narratives and undermine trust in democratic institutions.

From Moscow to Spanish voters

One of the investigation’s most significant findings concerns a Spanish-language Telegram network operated from Moscow by Enrique Arias Gil, a political scientist wanted by Spanish authorities over his alleged involvement with the pro-Russian hacktivist collective NoName057(16).

According to the report, his Telegram channel published recruitment advertisements offering Spanish citizens up to $3,000 per month and $25,000 signing bonuses to join the Russian Army. Other messages solicited confidential information about Spanish officials and encouraged participation in cryptocurrency-funded cyberattacks.

The channel operates within a broader network of Spanish-language Telegram accounts with approximately half a million combined subscriptions. These channels redistribute pro-Kremlin narratives, often within minutes, connecting Russian sources to established political audiences in Spain.

Influencing Spanish political debate?

Between 20 August and 5 November 2026, Golden Owl examined 54,737 social media items across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X and Telegram, alongside dark-web intelligence. Using its AI-assisted investigation platform Noctua, researchers identified 41,509 election-related items, analysed 28,516 in detail and mapped 10,773 accounts.

The findings expose several distinct operations capable of influencing Spanish political debate, although researchers found no evidence that these activities had altered voting behaviour or compromised electoral infrastructure.

Fake Spanish newsrooms operated from Vietnam

The investigation also uncovered twelve Facebook pages presenting themselves as Spanish news or community outlets while operating through a network linked to Vietnam.

Together, the pages attracted approximately 270,000 followers. Some used Spanish addresses and patriotic advertisements to establish credibility before publishing fabricated political stories.

One advertisement encouraged users with the message “If you love Spain”, attracting predominantly Spanish audiences, including older users. From late October, the pages increasingly published invented political statements and election-related controversies.

Researchers traced the operation through Meta transparency records, advertising payments, shared domains and publishing infrastructure.

The report describes the phenomenon as “the industrialisation of deceptive influence”, showing how commercial content farms can manufacture seemingly independent political voices while generating advertising revenue.

Disinformation crosses borders within minutes

The investigation demonstrates how rapidly misleading narratives can travel between countries and platforms.

Following the deadly railway collision near Urda on 28 October, unsupported sabotage allegations appeared online within 36 minutes. A fabricated quotation attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently circulated through international accounts, with one Argentina-based account generating more than 606,000 views.

Researchers also documented how electoral fraud allegations originating in Latin American political discussions reached Spanish audiences, with related claims spreading between accounts in Argentina and El Salvador within 29 minutes.

AI-generated imagery, synthetic political content and coordinated account networks further amplified misleading narratives about postal voting, electoral fraud and political scandals.

A challenge for journalism and democratic resilience

For journalists investigating disinformation, the report illustrates the importance of combining open-source intelligence, platform transparency data, network analysis and AI-assisted verification.

Golden Owl emphasises that the documented activities do not necessarily belong to one centrally coordinated operation. Their combined impact nevertheless creates vulnerabilities in the information environment.

As the researchers conclude, “Spain’s democratic process will depend not only on the security of the ballot, but on the ability of its institutions, media and citizens to recognise and resist the invisible arsenal now operating within its information space.”

The findings demonstrate how disinformation increasingly operates through interconnected digital infrastructures that can exploit breaking news, manufacture credibility and spread misleading narratives faster than traditional verification processes can respond.

Metropolis TV

Devid Ilievski — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 01:56:52 +0000

Metropolis

A weekly TV foreign affairs magazine and website made by a global network of 50 video journalists contributing unique stories within the same broad theme.

When

2008

Where

Netherlands

Who

Stan van Engelen, Bregtje van der Haak, Alex Klippel, Loe Schout, IJsbrand van Veelen and many others at VPRO Television. Supported by Hivos and NCDO. Currently, it is broadcasted by HUMAN.

Website

human.nl/metropolis

What is it?

Metropolis is a global network of 50 video journalists in 45 countries managed from The Netherlands. Every week, it brings together the director’s cuts of about 10 short video reports from various countries on one shared theme on a website.

These reports are also recut into a succesful 30-minute weekly TV magazine for youth. Metropolis has worked with over 90 journalists and filmmakers in 80 countries in the past five years.

The bilingual website (Dutch/English) offers options to browse by country, topic, or correspondent, and includes hundreds of contributions from correspondents in countries like Azerbaijan, Swaziland, Yemen, Greenland, Ecuador, Mongolia and Venezuela on topics ranging from police and teachers, to obesity, polygamy, and the perfect body.

The project was initiated by VPRO public television in The Netherlands to bring a wider variety of global voices to the fore and is supported by NGOs with an interest in diversity and freedom of expression. Metropolis has run successfully for five years and resulted in a remarkable collection of authentic and intimate stories from the daily lives of citizens all over the world.

The Metropolis TV format has been adapted for several countries, including Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece and Nicaragua.

How does it work?

The Metropolis team consists of one executive producer, one commissioning editor, a video editor and four regional producers. It is based in The Netherlands and issues a weekly call to the network for story ideas relating to a specific theme.

Themes vary widely and range from occasional news subjects with a global impact (e.g. the election of a new pope, the Olympic games) to human interest and broader cultural themes (e.g. homosexuality, education).

In the past, calls for story ideas have included questions such as: What is it like to be a fifteen-year-old girl in your country? What does it take to get a driver’s licence? Could you profile an “outsider” in your country? An adolescent? A gay person? An addict?

Local correspondents look for remarkable and previously unreported stories within these broad themes and pitch them to the Metropolis editors. The ten best story ideas within one theme are then selected, commissioned, produced by the video journalists in their country, uploaded to the Metropolis server in The Netherlands, and subtitled in Dutch and English.

The local directors are paid a competitive rate in their countries for producing, shooting, directing, and editing the stories. The stories are published full length (6-10 minutes) as “director’s cuts” on the bilingual Metropolis website and also recut into a 30 minute weekly foreign affairs TV magazine on Dutch national television.

Occasionally, Metropolis uses the network to produce specials and feature length documentaries, e.g. the 60 minute documentary “Coming to the City,” which gave the abstract trend of urbanization a human face by profiling five people in five countries who moved to the city from the countryside.

Presenter Stef Biemans

The secret of Metropolis is the quality of its network of excellent video journalists, who have been carefully recruited through open calls, film festivals, film schools, and journalism organizations. They are then further trained and coached by the regional producers in the Netherlands.

Why did we select it?

Metropolis’ modular project structure is flexible and innovative and makes it suitable for use on various platforms and in diverse cultural contexts. Multiple short video stories provide building blocks that can be “welded” together in a weekly TV program and/or watched individually on the Internet and mobile platforms. Broadcasters can add their own local anchor to construct a “glocalized” TV magazine with high quality global reporting at low cost.

This networked approach to global affairs reporting and the practice of archiving all directors’ cuts online results in a growing collection of intimate video stories, which adds insight into the peculiarities of everyday life and common human experience all over the world. By providing up to 50 perspectives on the same issue, Metropolis presents a truly global range of voices, some of them from countries where freedom of expression is limited and little information is available through regular news channels.

Online, the individual reports can be navigated in a variety of ways, depending on the viewer’s interests. Watch it as a meticulously crafted 30-minute TV programme or watch individual items online or via mobile phone. The Metropolis website features an original yet practical search engine.

Producer Alex Klippel: “My dream for Metropolis is a big server with all stories combined globally and one bureau in every country, tapping from the server to make its own programme locally. It is not easy, but possible. We have to just do it!”

Compare

Taking advantage of global digital networks, many new journalism projects are experimenting with new possibilities to cut costs and add quality and cultural diversity to foreign reporting at the same time. While many traditional institutions are downsizing or eliminating foreign buros, several online platforms are now specializing in high quality global reporting presenting a multiplicity of voices: Global Voices, Global Post, VJ Movement, Associated Reporters Abroad, Africa Interactive, and the TED Open Translation Project.

Related Cases

Metropolis TV

A weekly TV foreign affairs magazine and website made by a global network of 50 video journalists contributing unique stories within the same broad theme.

Hong Kong In-Media

An open public platform, free from political intervention and commercial influence, which promotes democracy and freedom of speech in Hong Kong.

Mediapart

A group of driven and accomplished French journalists in search of a new business model for creating a profitable independent press online.

Mídia Ninja

An activist journalism network specializing in real time broadcasting.

The Guardian Datablog

Devid Ilievski — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 13:28:16 +0000

The Guardian Datablog

The first systematic effort to incorporate publicly available data sources into news reporting.

When

2009

Where

United Kingdom

Who

Simon Rogers and Mona Chalabi

Website

theguardian.com

What is it?

Making the numbers make sense – according to Simon Rogers, this is what data journalism is all about. When he launched the Datablog in 2009, it was intended to be a small blog offering the full datasets behind news stories in The Guardian newspaper.

Every person in England and Wales visualised as a dot on a map

It now comprises an entire news section highlighting data driven stories, searchable databases, data visualizations, and tools for exploring data. Journalists at Datablog use Google spreadsheets to share the full data behind their work, visualize and analyze that data, and provide stories for the newspaper and the website.

The Guardian has integrated data into their news production process in an approach that distinguishes them from many other newspapers. Through the Datablog, the Guardian provides access to the raw statistics behind the news and makes it exportable in whatever form the user desires.

How does it work?

Big data enables journalists both to tell stories they could not tell before, and to tell these stories more effectively . Technology enables access to large amounts of information, much of it published by government agencies.

According to Datablog’s founder Simon Rogers, data journalism can be anything really.”It can be these enormous kind of data analysis projects. Sometimes it can just befinding the data.It‘s the stuff we all learned at journalism college, that is about finding information.”

Information is not a mess of numbers. Traditionally, journalists who were afraid of maths would avoid raw data. As Rogers observes, “Our job can just be revealing that data and saying: ‘These are the key numbers.What do you think?'”

Datablog makes it easy for everyone – Guardian journalists, other reporters and the public at large – to navigate through large datasets. Access to this information makes it possible to generate different types of stories.

Depending on the characteristics of a particular story, Datablog journalists produce a comprehensive article for print, a video news item, or a set of data visualization for the web.

Why did they make it?

Datablog aims to make it easier for people to understand data. It enables journalists to analyze open data sources, pick out the most essential stories, and break them down for their audience.

Datablog aims to create opportunities for crowdsourcing research and citizen journalism. For example, the site posted data about British politicians’ travel expense claims, then asked the public to help them match what a politician was doing on that day with their corresponding expense claim.

The Guardian’s related “Free Our Data” campaign has pushed the British government to review its access to information policies. Examples of citizen journalism on Datablog measure up to a high standard of quality journalism that integrates data into the news production process.

Why did we select it?

Datablog is excellent at data visualization. Among the first news organizations worldwide to integrate data into news production process, The Guardian is by far the most innovative pioneer in data visualization, interactive mapping and crowdsourcing. This has led to a number of essential stories, such as those about the war in Iraq.

Comparable case

The website visual.ly is a platform that connects designers, journalists, animators and developers with clients, featuring cloud-based collaboration tools. They are capable of delivering high-quality content quickly and on a large scale.

The platform also has a blog about data visualization. Data journalists and PhD-students in subjects such as Computer Science Visualization publish news about developments in the field.

Related Cases

The Guardian Datablog

The first systematic effort to incorporate publicly available data sources into news reporting.

Data Atlas

Online world maps visualizing existing data sets about major global development issues. Both the original data sets and the visualizations may be used free of charge.

Mapping Arms Data

An interactive data visualization that tracks arms and ammunition flows in order to understand the global arms trade and inform public debate and policy interventions.

Kremlin spends hundreds of millions on foreign interference and disinformation

Devid Ilievski — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 18:01:48 +0000

Journalist Laurens Groeneveld examines the findings and their implications for the Netherlands in a new article published by delouis on 21 October 2026, as part of Signal Jam, a collaborative investigative journalism project in which Multiple Journalism participates.

The Swedish investigation reveals how Russian intelligence services, state-owned companies, political strategists and digital propaganda networks operate within a coordinated system designed to influence public opinion and destabilise Western democracies.

According to the researchers, Sergei Kiriyenko, a senior Kremlin official, plays a central role in overseeing these operations. Dutch MP Kati Piri, who reviewed the report at Signal Jam’s request, warns that the Netherlands remains vulnerable to such interference and calls for greater public transparency about Russian influence campaigns. The findings underline the importance of identifying and exposing coordinated disinformation networks.

Through Signal Jam, Multiple Journalism and its partners investigate how pro-Kremlin narratives spread across social media, using data analysis and digital monitoring to uncover manipulation and coordinated online behaviour. The project aims to help journalists and the public recognise disinformation before it gains widespread traction.

Inside the Kremlin’s disinformation machine: The Insider exposes Doppelgänger network

Devid Ilievski — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:04:19 +0000

Investigative news outlet The Insider has uncovered the inner workings of Doppelgänger, a Kremlin-backed disinformation network targeting audiences across Europe and the United States. Published on October 21, 2026, the investigation reveals how Russian operatives use fake news websites, social media bots, deepfakes and artificial intelligence to manipulate public opinion and influence political debates.

Based on hacked correspondence and internal documents, the investigation exposes how hundreds of operatives, including Russian government officials, political strategists and professional propagandists, coordinate disinformation campaigns.

Established in 2022 under the supervision of the Russian Presidential Administration, the network impersonates legitimate Western news outlets, fabricates stories about Ukraine and exploits sensitive political issues to amplify divisions in Western societies. The documents also reveal how AI is used to generate targeted messages and how fabricated stories have reached prominent American politicians.

The investigation offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the organisation, technologies and strategies driving state-sponsored information manipulation. It demonstrates how coordinated disinformation operations combine traditional propaganda techniques with AI-generated content and automated distribution, raising urgent questions about information integrity, media verification and the resilience of democratic societies.

Same Faces Keep Appearing in Pro-Russian Disinformation

Devid Ilievski — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:41:19 +0000

Over the past few months, the same group of figures has repeatedly surfaced on Dutch-language X as supposedly credible sources in debates about Russia’s war against Ukraine. That is one of the findings of an analysis by the Signal Jam project, which monitors how pro-Russian disinformation enters the Dutch public debate.

Through social media, pro-Russian networks seek to weaken Western support for Ukraine, fuel distrust in democratic institutions and amplify narratives that shift responsibility for the war away from Moscow. Signal Jam, part of the investigative collective Open Eyes, maps the infrastructure behind these influence flows and identifies which voices are most frequently cited in Dutch-language posts.

The figures that appear most often can roughly be divided into three categories: prominent Western conspiracy-minded commentators, Ukrainian “insiders” and controversial academics, and foreign propagandists operating from or close to Moscow.

Prominent Western figures from the conspiracy sphere

Translated fragments from interviews and podcasts featuring American economist Jeffrey Sachs and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson circulate widely on Dutch-language X.

Sachs’ claim that NATO provoked the war is eagerly shared by Dutch pro-Russian circles, including by former Forum for Democracy leader Thierry Baudet. Carlson plays a similar role. Once one of the most prominent faces of Fox News, he has increasingly become a platform for fierce critics of Ukraine and Western support for Kyiv. Clips from his interviews are translated, reframed and shared as if they offer suppressed truths about the war.

Ukrainian “insiders” and controversial academics

Julia Mendel as former spokeswoman of Ukranian president Zelenskyy

Former Ukrainians are also frequently cited to create the impression of inside knowledge. Julia Mendel, who served as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s spokesperson until 2021 and published a positive book about him in 2022, went viral after appearing in an interview with Tucker Carlson. There, she repeated the persistent but unproven claim that Zelenskyy is addicted to drugs — a recurring Russian disinformation narrative.

Other anti-Zelenskyy voices also reach Dutch audiences through TikTok, Telegram, YouTube and X. Former politicians and bloggers such as Anatoly Shariy, Oleksandr Dubinsky and Myroslav Oleshko function as digital conduits for pro-Russian narratives. Their claims are picked up, translated and circulated in Dutch-language online spaces.

The same pattern applies to Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-born professor at the University of Ottawa. When Elon Musk endorsed Katchanovski’s controversial book on the origins of the Russia-Ukraine war, Dutch-language accounts quickly amplified the claim that Ukraine and the West, rather than Russian imperialism, were primarily to blame for the invasion.

Propagandists from Moscow

A third category consists of Westerners who have moved to Russia or operate within pro-Kremlin media ecosystems while presenting themselves as objective eyewitnesses or independent analysts.

Former Dutch journalist William Immink, who lives in Russia, posts about the “real Russia” on X and regularly appears in Dutch conspiracy-oriented media and podcasts to promote pro-Russian viewpoints. He shares this space with Norwegian professor Glenn Diesen, a regular guest at the Kremlin-linked Valdai Club, and Irish RT journalist Chay Bowes, who has promoted false claims about Ukraine.

Marta Havryshko, a Ukrainian scholar based in the United States and known for her work on gender-based violence and the Holocaust, also appears regularly in pro-Kremlin online circles. Her claims about the alleged large-scale presence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine are shared on X and discussed in podcasts hosted by pro-Russian figures, even though the broader narrative of Ukraine as a Nazi state remains one of the Kremlin’s most persistent and unsubstantiated propaganda frames.

A recognisable ecosystem

What these figures have in common is not that they produce the same type of content, but that they help sustain the same information ecosystem. Some provide intellectual legitimacy, others claim insider status, while others offer emotional testimony from inside Russia or Ukraine. Together, they supply Dutch-language pro-Russian accounts with a steady stream of quotes, clips and claims that can be repackaged for local audiences.

The Signal Jam analysis shows how a relatively small group of recurring names can have an outsized influence on the Dutch-language disinformation sphere around Ukraine. By mapping these patterns, the project makes visible how foreign narratives travel into national debates — and how social media turns a limited set of sources into a seemingly broad chorus of “alternative” expertise.

Gone Gitmo

Devid Ilievski — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 18:11:41 +0000

Gone Gitmo

An immersive docu-game based on the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, originally designed for Second Life and now available in Unity, based on actual reporting and facts.

When

2007

Where

United States

Who

Nonny de la Peña, Peggy Weil

Website

gonegitmo.blogspot.com

What is it?

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – colloquially known as ‘Gitmo’ – is one of the world’s most famous and controversial prisoner-of-war camps, home to hundreds of detainees from the United States’ ‘War on Terror’.

Following on her 2004 documentary Unconstitutional about Guantánamo Bay, journalist Nonny de la Peña teamed up with artist Peggy Weil to make Gone Gitmo.

A virtual but accessible version of the prison, in contrast to the real but inaccessible prison, Gone Gitmo is a fact-based simulation of Guantanamo Bay. The ‘player’ enters as a prisoner and discovers what’s it like to be imprisoned in the camp and lose his or her civil rights.

Since journalists are not allowed inside the camp, the reconstruction is based on interviews with former prisoners, videos and photos from a variety of official sources and legal materials that detail the plight of Gitmo prisoners.

How does it work?

The original version of Gone Gitmo, no longer running, was a virtual re-creation of the Guantánamo Bay prison in Second Life, a popular virtual world platform. In 2013, De la Peña and Weil recreated Gone Gitmo in Unity3D as a docu-game and first person experience.

In the game, users go through a virtual detention inside the prison camp and are immersed in the experience of being taken prisoner and losing their habeas corpus rights. The player’s avatar is briefly bound, hooded and forced to kneel in the same way that detainees were taken to the prison.

After arriving in the virtual replica of Camp X-Ray, players are free to explore the camp where various screens play clips from De la Peña’s film ‘Unconstitutional’ (2004) and from original U.S. Defense Department footage in order to create a spatial narrative.

Why did they make it?

Nonny de la Peña is one of the founders of immersive journalism, which uses new technologies to bring users a sense of ‘being there’. She defines immersive journalism as “the use of virtual reality and 3-D environments, built in a gaming platform, to convey the sights, sounds and feelings of news.”

Participants can enter the news stories as themselves, as visitors gaining first-hand access to a virtual version of the location of the story – or as a character depicted in the story. In this way, they can have a different level of understanding from reading a print story or watching news on television or online.

De la Peña believes that immersive storytelling is the future of the news and an important way to engage young audiences with global news stories. “We’re looking at a new medium that’s here to stay, and we need to be thinking about how to use it”, she said at a conference at USC Annenberg in 2011.

“How many kids are gaming? All of them. This is not a unique batch of individuals. It’s a growing audience. This has become a critical place where we can still tell news stories”, she said, comparing the state of gaming to the emergence of radio and television.

Why did we select it?

Gone Gitmo is a pioneering journalism project using fact-based virtual reality to tell an important news story about an inaccessible prison camp. It makes the invisible visible.

Furthermore, by offering a first person perspective on a hidden news event, Gone Gitmo opens up a range of new possibilities for users to be immersed in the news and to engage with it actively. Through immersion in virtual environments and first person storytelling, docu-game Gone Gitmo adds an innovative dimension to the news.

Although the building of virtual worlds for news games is still costly and time-consuming, we expect it will become more prevalent and influential in the future.

Besides prototyping immersive news stories, De la Peña also contributes actively to the discovery of best practices and the discussion about ethics for a largely unexplored field.

De la Peña: “For example, there is an issue here when you have virtual bodies – is it too subjective? How do you retain objectivity? How do you edit an immersive journalism story? You have to take pieces out and leave pieces in. There are always editorial decisions. What are the best practices for doing it in a virtual world?”

Some other docu-games

JFK Reloaded puts the player in the role of Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The player is then scored on how closely one’s version of the assassination matches the report of the Warren Commission: first shot missed, second hit JFK’s neck and third on the head.

According to the company, the primary aim of the game was “to establish the most likely facts of what happened on 1963-11-22 by running the world’s first mass-participation forensic construction”, the theory being that a player could help prove that Lee Harvey Oswald had the “means and the opportunity to commit the crime”, and thus help prove the Warren Commission’s findings.

The Guardian’s The Refugee Challenge invites the reader to make the choices real refugees have to make. After each choice players get a new challenge to solve, so they’ll get closer to the experience of looking for safety in Fortress Europe.

Project Syria is one of Nonny’s immersive journalism piece, first shown at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2014.

Related Cases

Gone Gitmo

An immersive docu-game based on the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, originally designed for Second Life and now available in Unity, based on actual reporting and facts.

Desert Rain

Desert Rain is a groundbreaking multi-media installation that immerses participants in the complex relationship between reality and virtuality, inspired by the 1990-1991 Gulf War.

Reportagem Pública

Devid Ilievski — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:27:30 +0000

Reportagem Pública

Civic journalism through crowd funding and open editorial participation.

When

2013

Where

Brazil

Who

A Pública; Marina Amaral and Natalia Viana

Website

apublica.org

What is it?

The project produced a series of twelve investigative journalism reports for both television and print about contemporary Brazilian society. Reports focus on social, economic and political issues including human rights violations, police abuse, public services, corruption and the environment. The stories are published on a special website. The project is crowd-funded and an editorial board formed by the crowd-funders chose the subjects of the investigative pieces.

Jessica Mota (reporter) and Luiza Bodenmuller (former head of the editorial office)

A Pública, a non-profit Brazilian journalism agency founded in 2011 by professional journalists Marina Amaral and Natalia Viana, initiated the project. The self-stated mission of A Pública is “to produce great investigative reportages driven by public interest (…) strengthening the right to information, qualifying democratic debate and promoting human rights.”

A Pública encourages readers and other media “to steal their stories” and re-publish them, lightly edited if necessary. In case of substantial editing or shortening, the “thieves” are asked to communicate about their plans via email. All stories are distributed with a Creative Commons licence by-nd.

How does it work?

Unlike traditional journalism, the funding as well as the editorial process at journalism agency A Pública, is collective and characterized by open participation and crowd-funding. Independent journalists present their story ideas according to an intricate system of rules and procedures and produce the stories.

As a first step, Reportagem Pública was registered as a crowd funded project at Catarse, the largest Brazilian crowd-funding community. The project was open for online contributions during a two-month period, from August to September 2013. Contributions could vary from $20 to R$ 2,000 Brazilianreais(approximately US$8.70 to $870). A Publica’s goal was to raise R$47,500,00 (or $20,652), but instead it raised R$58,935 ($25,623) from 808 individual donations. As previously promised, Omidyar Foundation then doubled the amount raised via Catarse.

After collecting the funds, A Pública organized an open call for story ideas inviting journalists to submit proposals for investigative reports within the project’s five main themes: human rights, police abuse, public services, corruption and the environment. Proposals for print publications, radio, or television had to be accompanied by a budget and could not exceed R$6,000,00 each ($2,608). A Pública’s staff then selected story ideas from the open call and published a shortlist of 48 investigative reportage proposals online.

By contributing to the project, donors obtained the right to join the Editorial Board, which voted for 12 final projects to be executed with the money raised. Originally, the idea had been to elect ten story proposals, but this number was increased to twelve after fundraising exceeded expectations.

Chosen story proposals include investigations about water control in Brazil, construction of a hydroelectric dam in Belo Monte, abortion, and the Brazilian penitentiary system. During the process, Publica communicated extensively with backers and used online tools for information dissemination and social mobilization.

What is the impact?

The collaborative thinking animating the project led to its intimate connection to a series of political demonstrations in the spring of 2013 in Brazil. “Reportagem Pública” became intrinsically linked to the agenda of the demonstrations, which expressed concerns about the state of Brazil’s public services, corruption, social inequality and so on.

The project makes it evident that a crowd-funding apparatus combined with editorial decision sharing can result in modern reportage practices, reconnecting journalism with civil society. This is even more crucial in moments of intense social conflict, when societies need journalism as a tool for understanding themselves.

Why did we select it?

Reportagem Pública creates new bonds between the producers of news and the public, fostering civil society engagement and strengthening the public sphere. Introducing principles of procedural democracy and participation in the journalism cycle, the project provides a new approach to journalistic research, producing high quality investigave journalism reports and promoting public debate.

Reportagem Pública’s network philosophy reveals itself in a collaborative logic that combines a crowd-funding model with open editorial engagement. Those who help to fund and build it drive the project’s final shape, scope and objectives in ways that deepen mutual commitment.

It’s hard to exaggerate A Pública’s importance within the Brazilian political context or to dismiss the dynamic energy of its ongoing experiments in open participation and networked journalism. During the 2014 presidential campaigns, annoyed by the superficiality of public debate and control of media corporations by political interests, A Pública created a news site styled after the hugely popular card game Truco, which forces politicians to confront and respond to facts and promises or be shamed publicly.

It also started a one issue website dealing exclusively with human rights. By acting as an agency, A Pública is helping to connect a greater network of producers to its potential audience, widening these circles of relation in a concentric expansion and building on new technological resources.

Related Cases

Reportagem Pública

Civic journalism through crowd funding and open editorial participation.

Citizens’ Investigation

A participatory journalism and crowdsourcing project launched by the world-renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei on his personal blog. The project aims to discover the number and the names of the schoolchildren who died in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

TRAC FM

TRAC FM A free, cloud based software platform using radio and SMS to track citizen reports and collect citizen feedback. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx_BivgFyww When 2010 Where Uganda Who Wouter Dijkstra, Javie Ssozi, Meier Boersma, Jurre de Beer Website tracfm.org What is it? TRAC FM is an innovative software platform used by media

Peivast

Devid Ilievski — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 14:39:39 +0000

Peivast

A monthly hardcover magazine covering the latest’s insights on ICT developments in Iran.

When

2012

Where

Iran

Who

Arash Barahmand, editor-in-chief

Website

peivast.com

Case researched by

Luuk Ex

What is it?

As a printed magazine, Peivast is running against the flow of digitization. The magazine’s focus on developments in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) makes the choice of print medium particularly remarkable. The founders believe the physical presence of the 180 pages, full-color hardcopy suits their target market, which they consider to be “the decision makers of Iran.”

“If you are a manager in ICT in Iran, this is your bible,” says CEO Arash Barahmand. Peivast is a magazine someone wants to have on his or her desk during a meeting, with subscribers including important players in the private and governmental sectors.

The quality of the content is another reason to produce old fashioned print editions. “Peivast is famous for running long stories.” The online trend of short stories, published as quickly as possible, made the founders decide to try something different. “We take a month to write about a story,” says Barahmand. “People have heard of news events, but wait for us to get the real insights.”

Why did they make it?

Peivast was started by three friends after they were fired from their previous positions writing for magazines. They decided to launch their own start-up magazine in order to be their own bosses. They found an angel investor who contributed starting capital. As Barahmand explains, “this investor’s company focuses on the pharmaceutical industry, so therefore he does not have a special interest in political uses of the magazine. We are lucky with that.”

However, the investor did have a goal with Peivast. His vision is to enlighten the Iranian public on how to start their own business in the ICT-market. The magazine became a platform that informs a younger generation of ICT-workers about it’s history, faces, and power relations in the ICT-market of Iran. With articles on the impact of censorship and the empowerment of users, the magazine tries to inform its public about various urgent issues and debates.

The founders decided to write about a niche market where political interference is less likely. “By focusing on this niche”, Barahmand explains, “we can write more freely compared to working for a general newspaper. We try to stay neutral and out of politics by delivering stories from different perspectives and ideas.”

The magazine is illustrated with cartoons about the digital world, including those addressing the negative side of technology from an ironic perspective.

The founders believe ICT development is more than just technology. “In Iran, information technology is changing the way people think. It is changing our culture and society.”

Why did we select it?

In the essay “The Future of Journalism: Networked Journalism” (published on this website) the writers state that due to “technological changes journalism is being transformed in the ways it is used and produced. These developments are paving a path towards better journalism and towards more independent journalists.”

Peivast is both a confirmation and denial of this theory: while the founders chose technology as their subject due to its disruptive character, they also believe journalism needs thoroughly researched, with well-written, lengthy pieces in print in order to successfully connect with their audience.

As a successful combination of old world journalism and new world subject matter, it sheds new light on what works as journalism in Iran today.

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