For Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism students

Welcome to Indicator, Newmark J-School

The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism has given you a full Indicator membership while you are a student at the J-School. This page explains what Indicator is, what your membership includes, and where to start if you're new to digital investigations.

First, activate your membership. Look for an email at your CUNY address asking you to activate your Indicator membership. Follow the link, and you'll have access to everything below.

Join us live in November. Craig will run a kickoff workshop for Newmark students. Date and details to come.

About us

What is Indicator?

Indicator is a publication that exposes digital deception and teaches people how to do it for themselves. We publish original reporting and investigations into scams, influence operations, AI-generated fakes, platform manipulation, and disinformation. We also provide the skills, training, and tools you need to do this work yourself: hands-on guides to digital investigative techniques, monthly workshops, and apps like OSINT Navigator.

Indicator members include journalists, researchers, and investigators at major news outlets around the world, as well as professionals at leading human rights organizations, due diligence firms, and more.

Indicator content and workshops will equip you with cutting-edge skills and knowledge to help you become a better reporter and investigator.

Every investigation is a lesson

At the end of our investigations you'll find an Indicator Info box that lists the tools and techniques we used. Read the story, get the recipe, and use it in your own reporting.

Indicator's cofounders have spent their careers on this beat

Craig Silverman

Craig is an award-winning journalist and author with more than 15 years of experience investigating digital deception and training journalists on OSINT tools and techniques. He teaches digital investigations at Toronto Metropolitan University. Before launching Indicator, he was a national reporter at ProPublica and media editor of BuzzFeed News.

Alexios Mantzarlis

Alexios has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of digital media, platform integrity, and information quality. Before launching Indicator, he was the founding director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech and a principal in Google’s Trust & Safety team.

Winner of the 2026 WAN-IFRA Digital Media Award for Best in Countering Disinformation and the inaugural CJF Hinton Award for Excellence in AI Safety Reporting. Read more about our impact →

Member benefits

What's included in your membership

Reporting and investigations

Every investigation we publish, each with an Info box listing the tools and methods behind it.

The Briefing: our weekly roundup of news, research, and new OSINT tools, every Friday.

Skills and Training

Indicator Guides: step-by-step guides to OSINT tools and techniques. 30 so far, from searching Telegram to finding the real owner of a company.

Monthly live workshops with Craig. Every session is archived with video, slides, transcript, and notes. More than 15 so far.

The Academic Library: research on misinformation, AI-generated content, and platform accountability. Useful for papers and capstone projects.

Tools

OSINT Navigator: describe what you're trying to do in plain language and get suggestions for tools that can help. Your membership comes with extra daily searches.

Interactive trackers built for our investigations, including the AI Community Notes dashboard and the "Grok, is this true?" tracker.

Expert insight from a global network of investigators

Show & Tell: our podcast, where reporters and researchers explain how they did a specific investigation.

Guides by experts in the field:

Using Telegram in investigations, by Jane Lytvynenko of NBC News
8 mistakes people make when prompting AI, by Henk van Ess of Digital Digging
Build your own reverse image search engine, by Ishaan Jhaveri of BBC Eye Investigations
Investigating crypto transactions, by Tom Caliendo, who spent two decades at the NSA and CIA

Your starter pack

Where to start

Get your machine set up

Get your machine set up for OSINT →

Start here. It covers the browser, extensions, and privacy setup that investigators use, with advice from more than a dozen working practitioners.

Tip: begin with the OPSEC, Browser, Web Capture, and Extensions sections. The sections on Python and command-line software can wait until you're more comfortable.

Read these five guides, in order

1

The state of online search: How to find what you're looking for in the age of AI
Search is the skill everything else depends on. Learn the operators and strategies investigators use now that AI summaries sit between you and the results.
2

The Indicator Guide to tools for capturing webpages and social media content
If you can't show what you saw, you can't report it. Compares free and paid tools for saving pages and posts.
3

12 free tools for monitoring webpages and keywords
Set up alerts so you know when a page, person, or topic changes, instead of checking by hand.
4

The Indicator Guide to connecting websites together using OSINT tools and methods
Our most popular guide. Use tracking codes, registration records, and other details to figure out who runs a website and what else they run.
5

The Indicator Framework: How to tell what your digital evidence is actually worth
Collecting evidence is only half the job. This framework helps you decide how much weight each piece can bear before you publish.

Watch a workshop

See all workshops →

Searching in the age of AI

A live walkthrough of the techniques in guide #1.

Video, slides, transcript, and notes →

Analyzing digital evidence

Craig evaluates a real case using the Indicator Framework from guide #5.

Video, slides, transcript, and notes →

Sign up for live workshops

Craig runs a members-only workshop every month, starting with the Newmark kickoff in November. Fill out the short form and we'll send you a calendar invite for each one, so you can attend live and ask questions.

Get workshop invites →