Totem

Desk Research (Totem)

Offered by Totem project,
Desk Research (Totem)

Outsmart your search engine. In this course on Desk Research for journalism, you will gain knowledge on best ways to use the Internet to collect data for investigations, including: finding documents and numbers; optimizing your Google Search results; and searching for specific sources.

Why should you take this course?Data collection is an important part of journalism and investigations. It allows you to move beyond opinions and unverified facts as well as to investigate and substantiate a story with data from official databases, including a range of viewpoints from different sources.

What will you learn?
You will come away from this course understanding:

  • How to conduct intelligent research online research on databases, people and sources * Best practices and tips for conducting information research beyond a Google search
  • How to search and extract data contained in local, national and international databases.

Totem is an online platform that offers interactive courses to learn how to increase digital security and privacy. The optimal user experience is currently on your desktop computer. The aim is to support journalists, human rights defenders and activists use privacy tools and tactics more effectively in their work. Not a journalist? Don’t worry these courses should work for everyone.
Start today and learn how to protect yourself online.

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