The scramble to archive Capitol insurrection footage before it disappears

Talk2020 is a searchable database from the Wall Street Journal with thousands of transcripts from presidential and vice-presidential candidates’ campaign speeches, media appearances, debates, and more. Users can filter by issue, date, candidate, or keyword to find quotes and facts about a candidate’s record. It began as an internal tool to help reporters and editors working in the D.C. bureau frame and inform their own journalism, but focus groups showed that news consumers also wanted to be able to quickly locate quotes and facts for their own edification and to support fact-based debates with others.

After typhoon Haiyan, the devastation to the Philippines was hard to locate and track. The Red Cross staffed volunteers to sort through crowd-sourced data to create maps. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap software application has helped the Red Cross better organize search and rescue operations.

After President Donald Trump’s administration began removing key research and datasets from government websites, archivists, librarians, and organizations banded together to form the Data Rescue Project, which is coordinating efforts to preserve vital information. The movement has recruited volunteers from a subreddit forum called r/DataHoarder that’s frequented by hobbyists with IT knowledge, and so far the project has cataloged more than 400 publicly available backups of government data compiled by volunteers.

When Facebook rolled out its Free Basics program offering internet services through a company-controlled portal, Indian activists launched the Save the Internet campaign to oppose the initiative and the practice of "zero-rating" on the grounds that these practices violated Net Neutrality. Through marches, social media organizing, and viral videos, the movement was able to sway public opinion and the Indian regulatory authority ultimately outlawed zero-rating.

In the 1980s, a virtual messaging network, then known as bulletin board systems (BBSs), acted as a support group for many who were in search of peer support and reliable information as the AIDS epidemic spread. Although the site was a grassroots effort with little to no financial stability, it grew to 500 daily users and 100 messages posted per day.

In what started as a series of posts on Twitter and evolved into a public database published by an investigative media outlet, Mediapart, a lone reporter documented police violence against France's Yellow Vest protesters in an act of accountability that had been neglected by other journalists and the government. David Dufresne's “Allô Place Beauvau” (a "hello" to France's interior ministry) documented 800 cases of police violence or misbehavior. Many of the cases came to Dufresne as tips from the public, which he then verified. His work was cited by French and international authorities.

While news of failures in the fight against climate change make headlines daily, there are many steps the everyday citizen can take to reduce their impact. Many don't know where to start though. That's where Project Drawdown comes in. This project is a global coalition of researchers, scientists, economists and others, that rate the impact of solutions, creating a way for people to see how they could possibly fit into the equation of climate solutions.

The homeless population in Seattle is in a crisis of high proportions, with people facing a myriad of challenges. Different organizations have started to better integrate technology such as social media in addressing some of these issues, transitioning away from the paper-heavy systems may hold them back from maximum efficiency in their mission and leveraging digital tools to better reach those in need.

To combat the spread of mis- and disinformation online, Singapore passed the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, which allows the government to order that corrections be added to posts containing false information or even block access to certain content. So far, 152 orders have been issued under the act, with most of the flagged content relating to public health, public order, or trust in government functions.

Following a fraudulent election and violent backlash against demonstrators, activists in Belarus used open source photographs and documents, as well as those submitted by journalists and citizens, to expose police and state actors participating in human rights violations via a secure Telegram channel.