Stage Talks with Bellingcat

This week's live Stage Talk was slightly different, we were joined by a Discord community member/open source researcher, Allison Jenkins. Allison was speaking on an ongoing project that she was looking for support on. Allison has lived experience of the Troubled Teen Industry and realised there was a lack of comprehensive and easy to access information on the industry for concerned parents or for potential future accountability. So over the last few years she has been building a publicly accessible information database on the institutions and companies involved in the industry, using open source techniques. At the time of the talk Allison was having difficulty finishing the project and getting it ready for public view, due to funding and resource restrictions. If you want to help Allison with her work, join our Discord server and ask for further information: www.discord.gg/bellingcat Links that were mentioned in the chat:The background article on the TTI: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/08/cult-spawned-tough-love-teen-industry/https://xjdp.aspi.org.au/ WASP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Association_of_Specialty_Programs_and_SchoolsAllison (and her ArchivEye tool) is featured in the article of the 2023 Bellingcat Hackathon here: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2023/06/16/third-hackathon-open-source-tools/ Project from the Bellingcat hackathon: https://github.com/eastrd/ArchivEye The talk was hosted by Charlotte Maher on Thursday the 11th of April in the Bellingcat discord server. Music courtesy of Artlist.

In this week's live Stage Talk we were joined by Sasha Issenberg, an author and political writer, speaking on how political parties around the world but particularly in the US, have previously and are currently responding to election mis and disinformation. You can find Sasha's full list of books here: https://www.sashaissenberg.com/copy-of-sasha-s-other-writingsAnd he can be found on X here: https://twitter.com/sissenbergThe talk was hosted by Charlotte Maher on Thursday the 28th of March in the Bellingcat discord server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.

In this week's Stage Talk we were joined by fact checkers, Alice Milliken and Hannah Ajakaiye. In the talk we discussed the role of a fact checker in this digital age and how these skillsets are vital for journalists, researchers and the wider public. We also spoke about how AI has had an impact on verification techniques. Hannah's profileA link to one of the social videos produced with Hannah for the combatting health misinformation campaignAlice's profile Bellingcat training sign upsBellingcat YouTube *Please note that during the course of this live talk we faced technical issues in the Discord Server. These issues are reflected in the recording.This talk was recorded on March 15th 2024 in the Bellingcat Discord Server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.

In this week's Stage Talk we were joined by Bellingcat reseracher, Logan Williams and some Discord community members who have recently become Bellingcat contributors. They were there to speak on a series of investigations into an environmental disaster which had been evolving since February 7th in Trinidad and Tobago. Bellingcat and these discord members used open sources to reveal details about the vessel leaking oil and who was likely responsible. Find all three investigations here: https://www.bellingcat.com/?s=tobagoAnd find our partners the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian's version of the third investigation here: https://guardian.co.tt/news/oil-spill-secrets-panamanian-firm-at-centre-of-tobago-oil-spillcargo-valued-at-us2m-6.2.1940419.ae386d7e8e In the talk we also referenced our work on the Russian grain smuggling operations, you can find that research here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/08/21/russias-ghost-ships-and-the-evolution-of-a-grain-smuggling-operation/ This talk was recorded on March 7th 2024 in the Bellingcat Discord Server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.

In this week's Stage Talk we were joined by Bellingcat' Director of Research and Training, Giancarlo Fiorella. Giancarlo detailed Bellingcat's efforts in the education space and how training high school students in media literacy may be one solution to the issue of disinformation. You can find a link to the Student View project here: https://thestudentview.org/resources-hub/ And our available workshops here: www.bellingcat.com/workshops/ This talk was recorded on February 15th 2024 in the Bellingcat Discord Server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.

Warning: This episode discusses explicit adult content and child sexual abuse material (CSAM).This week we were joined by Bellingcat Researcher Kolina Koltai, discussing her latest research focus into nonconsensual sexual AI generated imagery and the communities and companies set up to create and distribute AI porn. Her research so far has led to restrictions on one company's payment providers and the closure of the discord server set up for their creator community. You can read her research into the company AnyDream here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/11/27/anydream-secretive-ai-platform-broke-stripe-rules-to-rake-in-money-from-nonconsensual-pornographic-deepfakes/ This talk was recorded on February 1st 2024 in the Bellingcat Discord Server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.

For the first stage talk of 2024 we were joined by Bellingcat Technical Fellow George Dyer. George is a developer and an entrepreneur, he is the cofounder of Informatism, an AI and data research firm that is currently building a financial news and data platform. During his time at Bellingcat George built a useful toolkit for financial researchers and journalists. The toolkit allows users to navigate the US company regulatory database EDGAR with ease. EDGAR is free-to-access unlike many other regulatory databases in the US but is underused. Find the toolkit here And the written guide to the tools hereThis talk was recorded on the January 18th 2024 in the Bellingcat Discord Server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.

For our final Stage Talk of 2023, Ollie Ballinger joined us on stage. Ollie is a lecturer in Geocomputing at University College London and a regular Bellingcat contributor. He is known for his development of useful tools for open-source research. In this session, he shares the details behind his latest tool, a map that allows you to estimate probable damage in a given area based upon Sentinel-1 satellite imagery and established geolocations. Researchers and organisations around the world have been using the tool adaptations Ollie has created to assess likely damage in Gaza, Ukraine and beyond. You can find a guide to what he was discussing in the talk here: https://oballinger.github.io/PWTT/paper.html and find the guide and the tool itself here: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2023/11/15/a-new-tool-allows-researchers-to-track-damage-in-gaza/ . The talk was hosted on Thursday the 14th of December in the Bellingcat discord server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.

This week journalist and mental health first aider Hannah Storm joined us on stage. Hannah co-authored the first study into moral injury and the media for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. She also launched the Headlines Network, an organisation set up to create connections and drive conversations towards improving mental health in the media and communications industries. During the talk she discusses her research and provides personal guidance on how to protect yourself from harm when researching traumatic events. Hannah is not a mental health clinician, but someone with lived experience and a research background in the topic. The talk was hosted on Thursday the 30th of November in the Bellingcat discord server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.

This week new Bellingcat researcher Pooja Chaudhuri joined us on stage. Pooja is experienced in following the movements of far-right groups in India. For her first article for Bellingcat, Pooja investigated the phenomena of auto-generated music videos on YouTube and how some of these lyric videos were based upon songs that encourage the expulsion of muslims from India. During the talk she unpacks her research and explains why these songs could be considered dangerous. The talk was hosted on Thursday the 2nd of November in the Bellingcat discord server. To join the server, download discord and visit www.discord.gg/bellingcat . Music courtesy of Artlist.Link to articles:https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/16/youtube-is-autogenerating-videos-for-songs-advocating-the-expulsion-of-muslims-from-india/Link mentioned in the talk:https://mattw.io/youtube-metadata/https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6007071?hl