Where to Find Bellingcat's Guides for Learning Open-Source Investigation Techniques

Updated

Bellingcat's guides are collected in the Guides section of bellingcat.com, reachable from the "Latest Guides" area of the homepage. They are free to read and organized by topic and by the team that produced them, so you can go straight to the subject you want to investigate. Each guide walks through the tools and workflow for a specific task rather than offering general theory.

What the Guides Section Contains

The homepage's "Latest Guides" block lists recent entries with their topic tags and publishing team. Examples visible on the site include:

  • Burning Forests: Tools for Tracking and Reporting Wildfire Damage — tagged Copernicus, Environment, and Environment and Wildlife Investigations Team. This is the place to start if you want to use satellite data to assess fire damage.
  • How to Use AI to Help Find Civilian Harm — tagged AI, Civilian Harm, and Conflict and Human Rights Team. It covers using AI as part of an investigation workflow.
  • China's 'Little Red Book' for Open Source Gold — tagged China and Social Media Mining. A guide to mining a specific social platform for evidence.

A "See all guides" link sits below the latest entries, which is how you reach the full archive rather than just the most recent three.

How the Guides Are Organized

Two organizing dimensions are visible in the listings:

Dimension Examples from the site Use it when
Topic tags Copernicus, Environment, AI, Civilian Harm, China, Social Media Mining You know the subject matter you want to investigate
Team Environment and Wildlife Investigations Team; Conflict and Human Rights Team; Digital Hate and Harms Team You want more guides in the same style or specialty

Because each guide carries both, you can scan by tag first and then check whether the producing team has published related material.

How to Use a Guide

The guides are written as step-by-step workflows: they name the tools, explain what each step produces, and show how the pieces combine into a finished investigation. To get the most from one:

  1. Pick a guide that matches a real task you have. For example, if you want to verify damage to a landscape, start with the wildfire-tracking guide rather than a social media guide.
  2. Read the tool list first. Note which platforms and datasets the guide relies on (for instance Copernicus imagery) and confirm you can access them before following the steps.
  3. Work through the steps in order, checking the intermediate output at each stage — the guide's logic usually depends on each earlier result being correct.
  4. Cross-reference the topic tags to find companion guides that cover adjacent skills.

The site does not state that guides require an account, so treat access as open reading; the membership program is described separately (see below).

Beyond the Guides: Other Learning Channels

The homepage lists additional ways Bellingcat shares technique:

  • Open Source in Short — "a series of bite-sized investigations and quick insights into techniques used by Bellingcat's researchers." Recent entries include a satellite-imagery piece on Border Patrol road construction in Big Bend National Park, a geolocation case ("Like Clockwork: An Orange Wall Exposes Yet Another Active Club 'Fight Night'"), and a deepfake analysis from the India-Pakistan conflict. These are shorter than full guides but show techniques applied to live cases.
  • Podcasts — the site points to "all of our podcast offerings," where researchers discuss the stories behind their work.
  • YouTube — video output is linked from the homepage.
  • Membership program — the site states that members "receive advanced access to the latest Bellingcat training announcements and podcasts." Membership is therefore the route to early notice of training; the page does not list prices, so check the membership page for current terms.

A Practical Starting Path

If you are new to open-source investigation, a sensible sequence is: read one full guide in your area of interest end to end, then read a matching Open Source in Short piece to see the same techniques applied to a current case, then follow the topic tag to the next guide. For example, the wildfire guide plus the satellite-imagery Border Patrol piece gives you two worked examples of imagery analysis before you attempt your own.

One caveat worth knowing: the guides teach method, not conclusions. The site's own framing of its AI geolocation work notes that tests showed "big improvements but humans remain key" — a reminder to verify tool output yourself rather than treating it as final.