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Walking on the edge. Cooperation and data sharing between academic researchers and journalists while investigating crimes and other deviant behaviors

by Michele Riccardi (Crime&tech e Transcrime – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)

Chapter 1: the background and the legal challenges

The background

The cooperation between journalists and academic researchers is one of the many expressions of the so-called “citizen science” domain. In this big world, a small village is the one built by the investigative journalists of IRPI – Investigative Reporting Project Italy and the academic researchers of Università Cattolica – Transcrime (and its spin-off Crime&tech). We (researchers) have been working together with IRPI friends for some years. Our cooperation was born informally, by acknowledging (i) a common interest towards certain phenomena – first of all mafia-type organised crime and financial crimes and (ii) that we could help each other, by exchanging data or cases (e.g. judicial files, police reports, statistics) for our activities.

Our cooperation has then deployed into a number of funded projects, first of all ISF project DATACROS I and II, in which IRPI was one of the partners, or project CSABOT, and then finally project COESO. Specifically during project DATACROS we developed a prototype tool (DATACROS tool) which, by combining data of different nature (e.g. business ownership data, data on politically exposed persons, data on persons included in enforcement or sanction lists), helped end-users to make faster, more effective and more secure financial crime investigations. The tool was not only tested by law enforcement or judicial authorities, but by investigative journalists as well – including our IRPI friends.

Obviously, we do a different job and achieve different purposes. Let’s assume we both get access to a beautiful rich archive of corruption cases in Italy: IRPI journalists are interested in stories; they look for names, events, tips which, after a rigorous fact-checking, can become news to be published on some media outlet. We, researchers, are interested in extracting from the cases a variety of schemes, classifications, generalizations of modi operandi and behaviors – while we are not necessarily interested in individuals’ names. We need eventually to produce analysis, research and publications, with a slightly different target readership. Both, we are interested in contributing to improving the understanding of the criminal phenomenon (in this case, corruption), disclose it, early detect it, improve transparency and prevent inequality and illicit activities. Are this common aim and background between journalists and researchers enough for cooperating and freely sharing information between us? And for exchanging even personal data or other sensitive information?

The role of COESO

Thanks to the Horizon project COESO – and specifically to our work in Pilot 4 – we have had the occasion to reflect thoroughly about this question and (i) identify clearly what are the challenges, in both legal and technical terms, of our cooperation and data sharing; (ii) apply a more structured method so as to address these challenges; (iii) make it our method a possible path for future partnerships between journalists and academics in the area of crime analysis and investigation.

Besides reflecting and designing a shared method, COESO has given us the opportunity to apply the method and to “test” it in some common investigation areas, including (a) the assessment of money laundering risks in the real estate sector in the region of Milan, Italy; (b) tax fraud and circumvention of sanctions in the maritime industry; (c) the infiltration of organised crime in local legitimate businesses in the Lazio region.

While other blog posts tell the background story of the three use-cases, here we would like to address in more general terms the legal and technical challenges of our cooperation. A first blog post – the present one – will discuss the key issues or principles to be taken into account. A second post the solutions employed or proposed to address these challenges.

Three poles and three sets of fundamental rights

Any collaboration between researchers and investigative journalists, especially those in the field of crime investigation, lives a constant opposition and (re)composition between three poles, which are three sets of fundamental rights, as also stated by the Charter of the European Union:

  • the need to guarantee the right of access to and freedom of information, in line with Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights;
  • the need to safeguard personal data and sensitive information (e.g. those which are crucial to carry out a safe and effective investigation), in line with Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Charter;
  • the push (fostered by the European Commission) of “FAIR-ification”, i.e. the need to produce information which could be findable, openly accessible, interoperable and re-usable for future research purposes, in line with Article 13 of the Charter.

When researchers or journalists act in sensitive domains such as the investigation of corruption and other financial and organised crimes, they need to find a balance between these three poles, which is not at all easy. If then they are working together on these matters, finding a balance becomes even harder. Certain legal and technical challenges – first of all, to what extent and under which conditions they can share data and cases – have to be addressed. But guidelines and indications about how this shall occur are lacking, and eventually researchers and journalists often grope around in unexplored areas.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash


OpenEdition vi suggerisce di citare questo post nel modo seguente:
Luca Rinaldi (27 Gennaio 2023). Walking on the edge. Cooperation and data sharing between academic researchers and journalists while investigating crimes and other deviant behaviors. The Backstory. Recuperato il 13 Marzo 2026 da https://doi.org/10.58079/ur3y