Introduction

Prophecies is a platform to fact check data collaboratively. It is a free open-source software developed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Why did we create Prophecies?

ICIJ is a non-profit leading outstanding investigations involving hundreds of reporters around the world. Each of our project leverage the power of data and technology to investigate issues of global importance. To be able to simultaneously publish a story in so many media, every single line of data we use must be fact checked. This is, as we say internally, "our secret sauce". Some of the datasets we produce rely on a very heavy effort to be verified, sometimes with up to 4 different rounds of verification.

In order to make sure this workflow is well organized and efficient, we created Prophecies.

How can I use Prophecies?

Prophecies is a collaborative tool that must be available online to its users. Therefore, to use Prophecies you must install it on your server, as web application.

Wondering how you can install Prophecies on your server? Follow the guide!

What skills are needed to install Prophecies?

Prophecies is a Python application built at the top of the Django framework. To ease installation, we publish a Docker image of the application on Docker Hub. The image is built both for ARM64 and AMD64 which ensure a wider level of compatibility.

To install Prophecies, you will need to have a good understanding of how Docker and Docker Compose work and how they can be used. You will also need to have basic knowledge of how to setup a PostgreSQL database. In this guide, we will use a database directly installed in a Docker.