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AFP Digital Courses : Digital Investigation Techniques

AFP Digital Courses website offers free online training designed primarily for journalists and journalism students. These courses, created by AFP’s (Agence France-Presse) digital investigations team, focus on teaching critical skills for digital investigations, such as verifying online content, using geolocation tools, detecting disinformation, and mastering reverse image searches. The platform includes structured learning paths (basic, intermediate, and advanced) allowing users to progressively build their expertise and earn certificates along the way. The platform's step-by-step learning structure, supported by quizzes and real-world examples from AFP’s fact-checking team, helps beginners grasp the complexities of digital investigation​.

For anyone interested in OSINT (Open Source Intelligence), this site is a valuable resource. It provides practical training in essential techniques like efficient online searching, social media analysis, image verification, and geolocation, which are core components of OSINT. Additionally, courses tailored to tackling disinformation, especially around elections, are particularly relevant in today's media environment. This training program is supported by Google News Initiative.

Basics level​

The beginner's course includes 5 modules that will teach you the basics of advanced internet research.

Course 1: Search Engines​

In this first module, you will learn how to refine your searches using your search engine to filter out irrelevant results. You will discover how to use search operators and combine them to create complExamplequeries. You will also learn how to use your search engine’s date filters to get results within a specific time frame. This will help you effectively narrow down your searches and focus on relevant information according to your needs.

The main Boolean search operators are:

  • AND : This operator allows you to combine multiple terms and get results containing all of those terms.

Example: dog AND cat will show results that contain both the word "dog" and the word "cat".

  • OR : This operator allows you to get results that contain either one or both of the terms.

Example: dog OR cat will display results that contain either "dog" or "cat" or both.

  • "" : Quotation marks allow you to search for an exact phrase. They are very useful for avoiding variations in the results.

Example: "black dog" will show only results that contain exactly the phrase "black dog" in that specific order.

  • - : This operator allows you to exclude a word or phrase from the results.

Example: dog -cat will display results containing "dog" but exclude all those that mention "cat".

  • * : The asterisk is a wildcard that can replace one or more unknown or variable words in a search.

Example: best * of 2024 will display results with different suggestions such as "best movie of 2024", "best book of 2024", etc.

The main advanced search operators are:

  • site : This operator limits results to a specific website.

Example: site:wikipedia.org dogs will only show results from Wikipedia about dogs.

  • inurl : This operator allows you to search for results containing a specific word in the URL.

Example: inurl:blog dog will display results where the URL contains "blog" and is related to dogs.

  • filetype : This operator filters results based on a specific file type.

Example: filetype:pdf cat will only display PDF files related to the search "cat".

Course 2: Social Media​

In this second module, you will learn the basics of searching on social media platforms.

On X, you will discover how to use advanced search, which allows you to filter your searches accurately using various criteria (account, date, language, number of retweets, etc.). You will also learn how to create lists, both public and private, and understand their usefulness.

On Bluesky, you will explore the main search operators, which are very similar to those on X, as well as the monitoring tool deck.blue, which offers a multi-column view to simultaneously track your feed, notifications, lists, and more. This tool also integrates multi-account management functions and the addition of columns based on hashtags.

On Facebook, a platform that is more restrictive regarding advanced search compared to X, you will learn how to search for information primarily within groups and pages. You will be introduced to the non-public tool Who posted what?, which allows keyword searches on specific posts, with filters for date, location, and user to find relevant content.

On Instagram, where search options are more limited, you will see how to effectively search through hashtags or geolocation.

Finally, for Snapchat, you will learn how to use the map to access public videos posted by users.

Course 3: Archiving​

In this third module, you will explore archiving tools that will allow you to both go back in time on the internet to find older versions of web pages and save resources for the future by archiving websites.

You will learn how to use the Wayback Machine, an online tool that allows you to view website archives at different dates. This gives you access to previous versions of a page, even if it has been modified or deleted, and it also enables you to archive web pages yourself.

You will also discover how to access cached pages, which are temporary copies of websites stored by search engines or archiving services. Cached pages allow you to view an earlier version of a site, even if it has been modified or is temporarily unavailable online.

In this fourth module, you will learn how to use advanced tools to trace the origins of photos and videos shared on the internet, as well as identify their first publication and the author.

You will discover how to perform a reverse image search using various search engines (Google Images, Google Lens, Microsoft Bing, Yandex, TinEye, and Baidu).

In addition to these tools, you will be introduced to the extension InVID-WeVerify, which allows you to conduct reverse searches for photos and videos across multiple platforms simultaneously.

Course 5: Geolocation​

In this fifth module, you will learn how to analyze the clues present in a photo or video to determine where and when it was taken.

You will also discover how to use Google Maps' Street View, which allows you to virtually explore many locations around the world as if you were there, and even go back in time to observe changes in a location. You will also learn how to search for clues using satellite and 3D views to refine your geolocation analysis.