Neo Technology Launches Neo4j Data Journalism Accelerator Program at IRE Conference

By Aileen Agricola | June 17, 2016

Neo Technology, creator of Neo4j, the world’s leading graph database, unveiled the Neo4j Data Journalism Accelerator Program at today’s Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Conference. The Accelerator Program aims to support data journalists by helping them better understand their data and allows them to draw new connections between existing information and new sources, ultimately allowing new stories to be uncovered and told.

The Neo4j Data Journalism Accelerator Program is designed to help data journalists get up to speed with analyzing connected relationships in Neo4j. With the ability to model and query data as a graph and draw insights from highly connected data such as email records, leaked documents, and public data, Neo4j is the defacto standard for discovering connections in this capacity. The technology has a long, successful track record of being used by journalists. Most recently, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) leveraged Neo4j as part of its Panama Papers investigation, the largest ever release of information about offshore companies and the people behind them. ICIJ also released the graph database it used for the investigation, along with an interactive tutorial for journalists and the public at large to explore the data.

Answering the question of “who is connected to whom?” is crucial to any investigation. Criminals, tax evaders, drug traffickers . . . they all work in networks. Graph databases can help make sense of these networks and easily visualize the connections. Learn how the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists turned documents into a public database of secretive offshore companies and how to use Neo4j and graph databases to make sense of connected data and find hidden stories.