This video provides a good six-minute primer on how to submit an effective Freedom of Information Act Request, with insights from a couple of the Washington Post's FOIA power users. The video provides several solid pointers for submitting a request which we'll elaborate on here
Read MoreCalifornia Elected Officials' Emails in Personal Accounts Now Subject to Public Records Law
The California Supreme Court has decided unanimously that public officials' emails and text messages on personal accounts are subject to public disclosure under the Public Records Act if they pertain to government business.
Read MoreFacebook Block Lists as Public Records
A pending lawsuit has the potential to establish precedent for whether the block lists of public officials’ Facebook and Twitter accounts are public records. These social media block lists effectively ban certain individuals and pages from communicating with an elected official’s social media account.
Read MoreInternet Archive Used to Capture Controversial Trump Blog Post from Defunct Trump University Website
A controversial 2009 blog item posted by Donald Trump to his now defunct Trump University website became the subject of a news story this week, demonstrating the value of archived websites in political campaigns.
Read MoreNewsDiffs: A Tool for Tracking Changes to Online News Articles
NewsDiffs.org is an online resource for tracking changes made to online news articles, detailing the words and passages that have been struck or added since an article's original publication.
Read MoreState by State Guide to Personal Financial Disclosures
VR Research has prepared a 50 state guide for how to search and download Personal Financial Disclosures for state legislators and other statewide elected officials. These records are an essential resource when conducting research on public officials, to understand their business dealings, financial backgrounds and potential conflicts of interest.
Read MoreFOIA Turns 50 and FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 Signed Into Law
July 4th marked the 50th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act, which has just been newly amended to improve public record access and modernize the law.
Read MoreState by State Guide to Lobbying Data
Lobbying data is an essential resource when researching influence over elected officials. Lobbyist registrations and expenditures have become readily accessible to search and download, but access to this data varies widely by state. To make this easier to navigate, VR Research has prepared this 50 state guide for how to access, search and download lobbying data.
Read MorePoliticians' Deleted Tweets Now Archived and Searchable Again
Politwoops, an archive of tweets that politicians have deleted from Twitter after posting, is once again active and searchable. The website allows for searching of an individual politician's deleted tweets, filtering by state, political party or political office, and keyword searching.
Read MoreState by State Guide to Campaign Finance Data
VR Research has prepared a state-by-state guide to researching campaign contributions and expenditures, providing information about and links to campaign finance data in all 50 states. As more states have moved to requiring electronic filing of campaign finance reports, data has become much easier to search, has been indexed to allow many different cuts at the data and is downloadable in several formats. However, the approaches to presenting, indexing and providing access to this data vary widely by state.
Read MoreInternet Archive's Wayback Machine Gets Funding for Major Enhancements
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a massive archive of 19 years of captured websites, has received funding for a next-generation overhaul which will add some search capabilities and enhance how it captures webpages and displays media-rich content.
Read MorePower Search for California Campaign Contributions
The California Secretary of State in coordination with non-profit MapLight has unveiled a new Power Search tool for accessing California campaign contributions. Power Search allows users to more readily review candidate and committee contributions and provides an easy interface for looking up individual contributors.
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