Knowledge Hub Session 2: Data-Driven Advocacy: Data Gathering Methods

Kuala Lumpur, 18 June 2025 – INITIATE.MY organised the second session of the Knowledge Hub series titled “Data-Driven Advocacy: Data Gathering Methods”. This full-day workshop built on the earlier session on tech abuse threats to enhance civil society’s capacity for evidence-based advocacy to address the threats with a focus on credible and ethical data collection methods.

Participants comprised a diverse group of practitioners from civil society organisations engaged in civil and political rights, gender justice, counter-extremism, digital rights, child protection, policy research, and data journalism. The programme offered a dynamic mix of expert-led sessions, hands-on methodology development, and peer-to-peer learning, grounded in strong regional relevance and practical application.

Facilitators shared practical strategies for accessing information, including through the freedom of information (FOI) requests, open data portals, and crowd-sourcing. They demonstrated the practical tools used in digital advocacy such as:  

1. TikAPI (extracts public data from TikTok), Telethon (scrapes Telegram data via API), and GDELT (monitors global news and events in real time);
2. Tableau (creates interactive data dashboards and visual insights) for visualisation; and, 
3. Bayanat, an open-source platform tailored for civil society data handling. They also explored HURIDOCS, a flexible system of 49 microthesauri for classifying human rights violations, widely adopted since the 1980s and adaptable to various advocacy needs. 

Furthermore, participants were assigned with tasks to develop and refine their own research hypotheses through small group exercises that focused on case studies ranging from online harms, access to education and environmental impacts. They needed to identify relevant data sources, design their research approach, and receive feedback on their framing and methodology.

Through Knowledge Hub, participants enhanced their technical literacy, built greater confidence in designing methodologies and collecting data, and deepened their understanding of shared standards for credible and ethical data collection to address tech abuse threats.

Participants of Knowledge Hub Session 2 learned how to strengthen skills in credible and ethical data collection.