It’s no secret that U.S. president Donald Trump often uses Twitter to push his political agenda. While he’s, perhaps, the most prominent politician doing so, he’s far from the only one. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, for instance, actually announced the appointment of his Minister of Education through Twitter before taking office.
With this initiative, which is part of the TruthBuzz program at ICFJ, we are building a way for people to access information themselves, without needing a journalist to act as intermediary. This is important because, when Aos Fatos or other media companies are asked about the source of their content and its context, which is frequently Bolsonaro’s Twitter account, it’s easy to look for evidence, even for older reports.
The Aos Fatos tool also keeps a record of all Bolsonaro’s tweets, even if they are deleted. This sheds a light into the past and current thinking of the president and gives transparency about his positions — especially regarding tweets published during his presidency, making him accountable for the statements he makes.
The tool relies on Workbench’s API to monitor the data from Twitter, and Workbench’s team told Aos Fatos that they will enforce Twitter’s rule of erasing tweets if they are deleted from Twitter and the owner of the account asks to do so. However, we keep regular backups of the data to prevent tweets from being erased.
You and your newsroom can also create a similar tool to track tweets from politicians, or other prominent leaders, relatively easily. Check out the tutorial ICFJ has prepared about the process.
Learn more about Spagnuolo and the Truthbuzz Fellowship on ICFJ’s website. You can also follow his work — and the work of other fellows around the world — on Twitter using the tag #Truthbuzz.
Main image screenshot from Aos Fatos’ online tool.
This article was originally published by the IJNet. It was edited and republished on Data Journalism Awards website with permission.