Political Kidnapping and Forced Disappearances

Disappearing people benefits the perpetrators in several ways: it considerably complicates any investigation, the person — dead or alive — remains hidden most of the time, and it can be mixed or confused with other crimes, such as kidnapping, child abduction, human trafficking, forced recruitment, murder, or desecration of a human corpse. 

Digging into Disappearances: Organized Crime and Missing People

In this GIJN webinar, Digging into Disappearances: Organized Crime and Missing People, on Tuesday, September 8 at 9:00am EST, we bring together two senior investigative journalists who will share their strategies and tips on how to investigate a disappearance, how to manage sources, victims and authorities, as well as raise some of the broader considerations of investigating criminal organizations.

Data Journalism Top 10: Hawaii’s Disappearing Beaches, Stolen Paintings, Investigating Disappearances, Herd Immunity Calculator

Hawaii’s scenery can be breathtaking, with cliff-rimmed white-sand beaches and surf-worthy waves. But our NodeXL #ddj mapping (Dec. 28-Jan. 3) found ProPublica highlighting dramatic erosion of the island state’s beaches over the past century. Also in this edition, we feature an interactive graphic to calculate the time to achieve COVID-19 herd immunity based on the US vaccination rate, a global vaccine distribution tracker, Federica Fragapane’s visualization of stolen paintings, and a compilation of 2020’s best data visualization lists.

My Favorite Tools with Quinto Elemento’s Marcela Turati

For our series on journalists’ favorite tools, we spoke to award-winning Mexican journalist Marcela Turati, co-founder of Quinto Elemento Lab, about the resources she uses to investigate disappearances in Mexico’s drug war. While information from victims’ families is paramount, she also shared insights on the value of open source tools, bank records, social media mining, and collaboration with nonprofit forensic teams in tracking the patterns behind the crisis.