Open source research isn’t only about analysing social media or satellite imagery. Another important area involves investigating company structures and relationships.
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    This is where OpenCorporates – a free repository of company registries aggregated from primary public sources, published in order to promote corporate transparency – can be helpful.

    To see other sites that offer access to corporate registries, go to the companies and finance tab of the Bellingcat Online Investigation Toolkit.

    David Szakonyi, co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, reflects that “by accessing OpenCorporates’ API, we achieved in less than a day what would have taken two people between four and six months to do”.

    Editor’s note: Some of the images contained in this guide have been blurred as they include the details of real companies that are featured on OpenCorporates.

    If you’re an independent journalist, you’ll need to use your own name and email address and provide a list of media sites that have referred to your reporting.

    You will need to tidy the table as when it displays the data, Excel will duplicate some of the company information (in columns) as it creates one row per officer.

    The original article contains 2,050 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 92%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • OtterOPAEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      So bellingcat is a investigative journalism organization (see their wikipedia for notable cases) that uses open tools and techniques. This article is a guide, written for casual users and journalists, for how to use one such tool.

      The key bit is probably:

      important area involves investigating company structures and relationships. However, official company registries can be unwieldy or difficult to navigate. This is where OpenCorporates – a free repository of company registries aggregated from primary public sources, published in order to promote corporate transparency – can be helpful. OpenCorporates is clear about the provenance of their data, so you know where they collected each record, and when. This is critical for companies and finance research and investigations.

      As for the data (quoted from Wikipedia)

      Data is sourced from national business registries in 140 jurisdictions, and presented in a standardised form. Collected data comprises the name of the entity, date of incorporation, registered addresses, and the names of directors. Some data, such as the ownership structure, is contributed by users

      So it seems like a one stop shop for data when going down the rabbit hole of the finances for an organization

      • 520@kbin.social
        1·
        10 months ago

        So in theory you could use this to automate gathering of corporate data?