CIJI Digital Goody Bag

Not sure where to start? Start with what you need.

The CIJI Digital Goodie Bag brings together useful tools, practical resources, guides, conversations and recommendations from across CIJI and its partner organisations. You don't need to explore everything today. Take what you need, save something for later, or simply have a look around.

🔎 I'm working on an investigation

🧰 I need a useful tool

🤝 I'm working with sources

✍️ I need help telling the story

🎧 I'd rather listen

🎬 I'd rather watch

📚 I'm interested in climate and information

🤝 What do the CIJI partners recommend?

📬 I want to stay in the loop

Don't know where to begin? The Exposing the Invisible team picked a few favourites.

The Exposing the Invisible Kit contains practical guides for people investigating issues in the public interest. Rather than dropping the entire library in your lap, we asked the ETI team which resources they would particularly recommend.

Here are four places to start.

Mae Lubetkin and Kevin Rosa explore how ocean data can support investigations into environmental and social issues, while introducing different sources of ocean data and the questions investigators should consider when working with them.

Yung Au explores how maps shape the ways we understand places, borders and communities, and how investigators can approach maps more critically as both sources of information and objects of investigation.

Ricardo Ginés looks at investigative storytelling through eight deliberately breakable rules, offering practical ways to approach the difficult process of turning research and evidence into a story.

Stavros Malichudis explores the ethical questions involved in working with vulnerable sources and how investigators can approach these relationships with greater care and responsibility.

Good. The Kit goes much further, with resources covering research methods, evidence, digital investigations, safety, collaboration, sources and more.

Sometimes you don't need another guide. You need a tool worth trying.

Tactical Tech team members have tested and used a range of privacy-conscious tools for research, communication, collaboration and digital safety. We collected some of them in one place as a practical starting point — not an exhaustive list or a blanket endorsement for every situation.

Some things are better heard from the people who have actually done the work.

The Exposing the Invisible podcast brings together investigators from different places and fields to talk about their work, experiences, methods and the questions behind their investigations.

The ETI team picked these four episodes as good places to start.

Drawing on investigations into global supply chains, Sophia Pickles reflects on the people who benefit from business-as-usual, the people who bear its costs, and what changes when we imagine swapping places.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Megha Rajagopalan talks about building trust with sources, pursuing difficult human rights stories, and why care, time and collaboration matter to investigative work.

Sajad Rasool reflects on journalism as a way to amplify marginalised communities, the role journalists play in their communities, and the power of storytelling to make overlooked issues visible.

Crofton Black traces his unexpected path from literature and philosophy into investigations of secret prisons and extraordinary rendition, and the questions that pulled him into investigative work.

Climate crisis, meet information crisis.

The RePlaybook brings together insights and practical approaches from 30 organisations and practitioners working on climate, information, technology and influence. Explore how to decode information disorder, challenge the technologies shaping climate discourse, and communicate more effectively in an increasingly polarised information environment.

Built for communicators, journalists, researchers and campaigners — and designed to be opened wherever your current question takes you.

Got a little more screen time left in you?

From conversations with investigators to practical resources and documentary films, Exposing the Invisible approaches investigative work from several different angles.

Journalist Janine Louloudi discusses data investigations into complex technologies, including the use of AI to track refugees and monitor behaviour, and what drives an investigator to keep following the clues.

A practical look at how our own actions and behaviours can affect not only our safety, but the safety of the people working around us.

From Tactical Tech's 2026 online mastercourse, this talk explores methods for investigating how climate and political influence shape decisions across individuals, organisations, communities and societies.

A documentary investigation into the physical, moral and political invisibility of US drone warfare in Pakistan, and how journalism, data and visualisation can help make its consequences more visible.

Six organisations. A lot of accumulated knowledge.

CIJI brings together organisations working across investigative journalism, media freedom, research, capacity building, technology and cross-border collaboration.

We've asked our partners to open their digital shelves and share tools, guides, reports and other resources they think are worth knowing about.

Not sure whether something you found online can be trusted?

Free Press Unlimited's practical guide brings together tools and techniques for checking online information and spotting false or misleading content.

The Media Freedom Rapid Response documented 736 attacks affecting 1,174 journalists and other media professionals between January and June 2026. Covering EU member states and candidate countries, the briefing provides an overview of current threats and developments affecting media freedom across Europe.

This 2026 shadow report examines the relationship between rule-of-law guarantees and media freedom in Moldova, offering a closer look at the conditions shaping independent journalism in the country.

A closer look at media freedom in Italy, including growing political pressure on public broadcaster Rai, concerns around media pluralism, legal harassment and digital threats facing journalists.

This practical resource introduces support available to media professionals forced into exile after fleeing war and crisis zones. It includes information on the JX Fund, launched by RSF, the Schöpflin Foundation and the Rudolf Augstein Foundation to provide fast and unbureaucratic support to journalists in exile.

RSF examines how national security arguments are being used to restrict journalism around the world and sets out ten recommendations aimed at strengthening the long-term protection of press freedom.

RSF's Propaganda Monitor is a multimedia investigative platform examining propaganda tactics around the world, designed to strengthen understanding of the information space and help people navigate it more safely.

Explore the state of press freedom around the world through RSF's annual index, which assesses conditions using political, economic, social, legal and security indicators.

VSquare is an independent investigative journalism platform focused on Central Europe and published by the Reporters Foundation. Explore cross-border investigations, analysis and reporting from across the region.

A Russian-language audiobook shared through DELFI examining Russian hybrid aggression and lessons for Europe.

The Digital Goodie Bag doesn't have to end here.

The Link, CIJI's newsletter, brings together opportunities, grants, events, resources and developments from across CIJI and the wider journalism ecosystem.

In other words: we'll keep looking so you don't have to find everything yourself.