The Research Desk: Tools for Tweets, Domain History, Data

We’re back with another selection of web resources and reports that might be of interest to journalists around the world. On the list this week: new reports from the International Labour Organization, Congressional Research Service, and UK House of Commons; and tools to search domain ownership, load tweets into a spreadsheet, and search open data. Good hunting!

Using Twitter to Find People at the Scene of a Breaking Story

As news stories break, journalists find themselves wanting to speak to members of the public. They could have witnessed an incident or may have been affected by an event. Their views count and they enhance our reports with a human angle. There are many ways to locate ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, but we don’t always know how our approaches will be received, or indeed if our messages to them will be read at all. This is where Twitter comes into its own.