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In "Hearing Voices", a cross-border and multidisciplinary team of journalists dug into the science of speech recognition and its use as forensic evidence. Based on more than 20 judicial cases where forensic phonetics evidence was used, the team, with amongst others Michele Catanzaro and Astrid Viciano, discovered that this evidence is all too often flawed, with far-reaching consequences. 

What is the potential impact of algorithms in journalism? What is the power of algorithms and why should it be at the top of a journalist’s to-do-list? Our second keynote speaker, Nicholas Diakopoulos, is a computational journalist with a background in computer science and human-computer interaction. He will give his keynote address at our annual European Investigave Journalism and Dataharvest Conference this May. The conference will take place from 18th until 21st May in Mechelen, Belgium.

Dataharvest is excited to welcome acclaimed French investigative journalist Edouard Perrin as our keynote speaker this year. Perrin came under fire after being the first reporter to reveal the secret tax deals between Luxemburg and multinationals, a tax evasion scandal dubbed LuxLeaks when Perrin collaborated with the global ICIJ network.

The 2016 investigation proved that Opel dealers in Belgium were using software that enhanced the performance of the Opel Zafira Tourer 2014 model but also increased its nitrogen oxide emission levels several hundred times higher than accepted norms. As a result of the investigation, Opel dealers are now changing the software package thereby making the cars less hazardous to the environment.

A 2016 grant supported an investigation that revealed how four of Africa’s most long-standing ruling political parties are being financed from illicit financial flows from large multi-national corporations.

This project has led to the development of an active community of contributors and users who are using the archive as a resource to defend victims of unfounded police surveillance and for court cases. The project has become an important example of how to overcome challenges of access to information.