Gibran Mena

Gibran Mena is an investigative and data journalist from Mexico. In 2018 he co-founded the organization Data Crítica, where he publishes reports on a range of issues, from industrial poisoning of water sources to gender inequality to the devastating effects of the soy and meat industry, and the inequality and corruption affecting indigenous communities. Gibran has published investigative reports in national media such as Reforma, El Universal, Periodistas de a Pie, Proceso and international outlets such as El País, El Diario, Telemundo News and Next City.

Gibran was a JournalismAI fellow in 2021. The team’s project, called Attack Detector, aimed to train a language model to detect hate speech on social media – in Spanish and Portuguese – directed primarily at journalists and environmental activists. During the 2021 JournalismAI Collab he developed a guide for journalists to understand the use of AI in analyzing satellite imagery, in collaboration with journalists from El Clip, La Nación Argentina, and Bloomberg.

Gibran partakes in the international Latin American network CAPIR, a consortium for investigative journalism lead by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, where he  has taught the enhancement of narratives with data to journalists and has mentored investigative pieces in several countries in Latin America.

Through his work with venenoenmiagua.datacritica.org, Gibran has analyzed large data sets to uncover patterns of water contamination and the impact on local populations. His reporting has revealed the human toll of this crisis, including illnesses, deaths, and economic hardship, while also exposing the political and economic forces that contribute to the problem.

At the moment Gibran takes part in the Berlin Scholarship Program, where he aims to build a program centerd around digital collective care for Latin American journalists and land defenders.