Journalists Get Access to Leading Location-Based Social Search Tool

Echosec launches “Real News Project.”

Victoria, B.C., July 2018— ​“The Real News Project” is a campaign to get Echosec Pro into the hands of more journalists allowing them to build, break and verify news stories based on real-time aggregated public content, faster, around the world. To do this, a limited number of free licences to Echosec’s patented location based search tool have been made available.

Echosec has been used in journalism since its launch in 2014. The platform has been used extensively to find real news, on the ground, from global politics and local trends to breaking news on a hyperlocal level.

In Apr 2017, citizen journalist Christiaan Triebert​ won the European Press Innovation Award for his piece “The Turkish coup through the eyes of its plotters” published on Bellingcat. Triebert used Echosec to help build the story.

Echosec CEO Karl Swannie feels that real time news discovery and verification are among the best uses of the platform.

“Historically, misinformation has led to actions that make situations far worse than they need to be. We need to gather truth from the ground, from storytellers that are living in these environments. With modern sharing tools we are capable of doing just that. I want to hear the stories from Caracas, Pyongyang and Tehran, unfiltered, so I can make my own decisions.”

Echosec is an industry-leading location intelligence platform. Combining online content such as social media, blogs and traditional media with geographic data (maps), Echosec provides crowd-sourced insights to support industries ranging from retail, hospitality, journalism and security.

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Journalists wanting to take part in this project should visit http://info.echosec.net/realnewsproject to apply.