Methodology & Sources

Modern Politics is designed as a transparent research commons. Every narrative section and data visualization draws from verifiable sources that readers can audit themselves. This page explains how information moves from discovery to publication.

Research Workflow

1. Discovery & Intake — We identify new material via archival crawls, library databases, FOIA releases, platform transparency reports, academic journals, conference proceedings, and community submissions. Each item enters our research log with metadata describing provenance, date, and source type.
2. Evaluation & Triangulation — Researchers assess credibility using a tiered rubric. Primary materials (official statements, legal filings, internal memos, technical documentation) receive the highest weighting. Secondary sources must demonstrate editorial oversight, clear authorship, and transparent methodology. Claims are triangulated across at least two independent sources before inclusion.
3. Synthesis & Drafting — Draft authors prepare narrative summaries that embed citations directly in the text. For data-driven stories, we publish methodology notes explaining dataset construction, limitations, and replication steps.
4. Review & Fact-Checking — Two editors review each draft. Fact-checkers confirm quotations, dates, statistics, and contextual framing. Legal reviewers examine pieces intersecting with privacy law, election law, or platform policies.
5. Publication & Version Control — Final content is committed to our public Git repository with change history. Significant updates are logged on the Blog / Updates page to preserve transparency about revisions.

Source Taxonomy

We categorize and tag sources using the following taxonomy:

• Government & Legal — Statutes, court opinions, regulatory filings, government reports
• Platform Documentation — Transparency reports, terms of service, developer documentation, API change logs
• Scholarly Research — Peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, dissertations, and institutional reports
• Journalism & Investigations — Newsroom reporting that meets rigorous editorial standards
• Community Archives — Digitized ephemera, community zines, oral histories, and activist repositories
• Quantitative Datasets — Structured data released under open licenses, including campaign finance records, ad libraries, and content moderation transparency data

Citation & Archiving Practices

• Every page includes inline citations or references in the metadata fields used by our search index.
• PDFs, screenshots, and web captures of ephemeral content are stored in a private archival repository to guard against link rot.
• When using user-generated content, we anonymize personal identifiers unless the material is already public in a professional capacity or consent has been granted.
• Sources are periodically revalidated to ensure they still resolve and have not been superseded by corrections or updates.

Data Ethics

We do not scrape private data or bypass access controls. All datasets used on the site are either public, licensed for research, or collected with explicit consent. We evaluate potential harm, especially in cases involving vulnerable communities or ongoing misinformation campaigns, and may limit detail to prevent misuse.

Contributing Sources

Readers can submit documents or corrections through the Suggest an Edit form. Submissions are reviewed within two weeks. When we incorporate reader-provided material, we note the contribution in the changelog and confirm the submitter is comfortable being credited.