Abstract

This thesis analyses best practices for investigative journalistic coverage of large land and natural resource deals. It situates the contributions and original insights brought to light over a decade of field reporting into the broader journalism literature on best practices for environmental coverage. It traces the historical evolution of large land deals, highlighting examples of effective coverage of the phenomenon. It offers an original methodology for approaching coverage of the issue, by melding ground-truth interviews and official records to identify previously unknown information on the causes, drivers and impacts of large-scale land and natural resource deals. It analyzes the utility of specific reporting tactics including: satellite mapping, social media, land registry records, stock price movements, investor disclosures and contracting documents to determine their utility in bringing new information to light on land grabs. And it offers two new approaches to the broader study of journalism, one theoretical and the other practical. The theoretical contribution reframes transparency into an active praxis of engaged reporting leveraged to wring previously unpublished information from powerful institutions. The practical contribution reimagines international best practices for reporter-fixer collaborations on coverage of large land and natural resource deals.