In search of answers
Three panellists discussed how their rigorous investigations reveal wrong and they question how these findings can hold power to account.
by Maya Baylis
In a day otherwise punctuated by open-ended questions and uncertain futures, the third panel, Open Source Investigation, reassured that we can unveil definitive facts.
Marija Ristic, manager for Amnesty International Crisis Response team, described how the organisation uses images, videos, and speech to prove a genocide in Gaza, crimes against humanity on October 7th by Hamas, or war crimes by Israel in Iran.
"Seeing this destruction and returning to my normal life is difficult for me," admitted Ristic. By the end of her talk, she had emphasised the depth, nuance, and attention to detail required in each investigation.
Dr Samaneh Moafi, of Forensic Architecture, left the room stunned and silenced. Dr Moafi gestured to a 3D rendering of a destroyed car, “from this distance, the shooter would have been able to see that it was children inside the vehicle, and yet it would have shot.”
Using an image revealing a vehicle’s 335 bullet holes measured one by one, satellite images, and a recording of gunshot noises, Dr Moafi methodically walked us through how they concluded that Hind Rajab, a Gazan girl, was killed by an Israeli military tank in Gaza. Crofton Black, investigative data journalist, described the process of analysing a millionaire’s Instagram post to identify his private jet, mapping its flight history, thus unveiling a domestic political spyware scandal – the jet was what Black described as a “storytelling device”.
After several more examples of data sets he’s worked with, Black ponders, “what, as an investigator, does it mean to know something?” – pushing us to question the merit of more and more data.
But it was Dr Moafi’s work that left a sober yet awestruck audience pondering the power of open-source investigative journalism. Though we found answers, the room was very aware that killings like Hind’s continued as we spoke.This raised the audience's question of whether these findings could truly enact change and stop atrocities, or if images are even capable of that.
Dr Moafi aligned with fellow panellists in affirming, or perhaps hoping, that images must still hold power. “I think every presentation on this panel [..] is trying to bring another dimension to the recordings on the ground, maybe an image or a voice […] which explains (stories) in another way”.
