Slide presented at "What People Leave Behind: Marks, Traces, Footprints and their Significance for Social Sciences", Online, June 15-16, 2021. The digital traces come from two different necessities: technological and social. The technological necessity is the traces used to ensure the proper operation of the system (e.g cookies, IP address). The social necessity is the traces used to facilitate interaction into the platforms (e.g. login, username, posting, liking). Recently the use of digital traces is used in data journalism and OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) a new approach to information in which the knowledge is based on investigation rather than research. The paper aims to introduce this new kind of approach and their contribution to the research in digital sociology.

1. FROM RESEARCH TO INVESTIGATION
Digital traces and their use in data
journalism and OSINT
DAVIDE BENNATO | UNIVERSITÀ DI CATANIA
DAVIDE.BENNATO@UNICT.IT | @TECNOETICA

2. DOING SOCIOLOGY OUTSIDE (ACADEMIC)
SOCIOLOGY
• The social science approach in professional context
➢Marketing
➢Business intelligence
➢Cybersecurity
➢Data journalism
➢OSINT community
➢[…]

3. RESEARCH STRATEGY IN SOCIOLOGICAL AND
INVESTIGATIVE RESEARCH
SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
• Discourse: scientific
• Guideline: theory
• Approach: analysis
• Data handling: homogeneus
• Results: from particular to general
(extending the result)
INVESTIGATIVE RESEARCH
• Discourse: consulting
• Guideline: case study
• Approach: profiling
• Data handling: juxtapose
• Results: from general to particular
(detailing the results)

4. DATA JOURNALISM
• The use of data for news reporting
• Investigation data based
• Data: public and open statistical source
(es. crime statistics, public sector
statistics)

5. OSINT (OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE)
• The use information source for
security and news reporting
• Investigation computational based
(not only numerical data)
• Data: information open source or
open access (es. digital tracks,
Google Maps, photo repository)

6. https://www.propublica.org/ https://www.bellingcat.com/

7. THE BBC «ANATOMY OF A KILLING»
INVESTIGATION
• One of the most important OSINT journalism
investigation in 2018
• The story: the identifying of place, date, and
killer, extracting information from a video went
viral where two women are killed by some
soldiers because probably supporter of Boko
Haram
• The story was published as a video in Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G9S-
eoLgX4 and a thread in Twitter:
https://twitter.com/BBCAfrica/status/104418
6344153583616

8. THE VIDEO

9. 1. WHERE?
THE CLUE THE INVESTIGATION
Answer: Zelevet, North Cameroon

10. 2. WHEN?
THE CLUE THE INVESTIGATION
Answer: after 2014, before 2016, the early 2015

11. 2. WHEN?
https://twitter.com/BBCAfrica/status/1044186386847404033
Answer: between March 20 and April 5th 2015

12. 3. WHO: THE KILLER?
THE CLUE THE INVESTIGATION
Answer: «Tchotcho» Cyriaque Bityala, Cameroon regular
army

13. THE RESULTS
BEFORE THE INVESTIGATION AFTER THE INVESTIGATION

14. CONCLUSIONS
• There are interesting similarities in the use of digital tracks between research
in sociology and investigation in journalism and intelligence
• The main differences are in the extending the results: finding the general
pattern in sociological research, define the details in the case studies of the
journalism reportage
• What is important would be the exchange of methologies and tools in this two
different knowledge communities

15. Social media
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidebennato
https://www.youtube.com/davidebennato
Skype
davide.bennato
Blog
www.tecnoetica.it
www.processiculturali.it
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THANK YOU