The training was organized by the Bellingcat international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network BIRN in Albania.
The training in Tirana was delivered by Bellingcat journalist Michael Colborne and investigator and researcher Foeke Pastma.
Colborne leads Belllingcat’s project to research and monitor the far-right in Central and Eastern Europe. He shared with local journalists in Albania his experience on how to understand the far right in international and different domestic contexts and how to apply open source intelligence OSINT techniques in researching extremist groups.
Meanwhile, researcher Foeke Postma spoke on geolocation and open search techniques in the internet and how to set up passive research accounts on social networks.
Among the topics covered were also facial recognition and social media networks research, as well as archiving and digital footprint tracing.