Digital Analysis Unit

Francesca Arcostanzo is Director of Digital Analysis Unit at ISD, working to ensure our research methods, tools and approaches in the digital analysis space remain consistent and innovative. With a decade of experience in digital research, she is an expert in digital methods, including text network, and statistical analysis of large-scale datasets. Recently, she has been involved in the development of Beam, the ISD-CASM technology that exposes, tracks and confronts online information threats, from disinformation to hate, extremism, information operations, harassment and harmful conspiracy theories. Francesca also holds a PhD in Public Opinion, Political Communication, and Electoral Behaviour from the University of Milan, an MA in Government and Public Communication, and an MSc in Intelligence & ICT. Previously, she served as a Digital Analytics Specialist at the European Central Bank, where she monitored and analysed conversations, disinformation and threats related to ECB policies. She is also a partner at CASM Technology.

Jan Nicola Beyer is a Senior Digital Methods Manager and Technical Lead at ISD Germany. Amongst his roles, Jan supports the Digital Analysis Unit (DAU) in the development and standardisation of research methods. He is significantly involved in the development of new digital research approaches that enable complex analyses of data from social media. Jan does this as part of the NOTORIOUS project in cooperation with the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg) and the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans Bredow Institute (HBI) in Hamburg.

Prior to joining ISD Germany, Jan worked for Democracy Reporting International (DRI), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and numerous other NGOs and consultancies. His academic background includes a Bachelor in European Studies from Maastricht University, a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Political Science from Oxford University and a Doctorate (PhD) in Political Science, jointly awarded by the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE). Jan has contributed to reporting from media outlets such as Politico, BBC, Euroactive and Verfassungsblog on critical issues around disinformation, digital policy and the risks of technological change.

Kevin D. Reyes is a Senior OSINT Specialist at ISD, where he leads methodology for open-source investigations and researches online hate, extremism, conspiracy theories, and disinformation. He also teaches open-source investigations as an adjunct instructor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. 

A recognized digital investigator, Kevin was previously director of research and intelligence at a consulting firm, where he conducted and managed hundreds of open-source and undercover investigations into illicit trade and transnational crime for Fortune 500 clients. Some of these investigations led to landmark civil cases as well as criminal prosecution by agencies within the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, among others. He also worked in law library management at several law schools, and in international criminal law research at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights in Washington DC and at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law. 

Reyes is highly engaged in the development of the OSINT field. While at Berkeley's Human Rights Center in 2016, he helped launch the first university-based, open-source investigations lab of its kind to discover and verify human rights violations and potential war crimes. He was consulting editor of Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation, and Accountability (Oxford University Press, 2020), the first book of its kind to teach the methods and best-practice of open-source research featuring contributions from other leaders in the field. He contributed to early work that led to the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations (2022), the first-ever manual on the effective use of open-source information in international criminal and human rights investigations, published by the United Nations. 

Kevin is a first-generation graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. His research and expertise have also been showcased in a variety of media outlets including ABC News, the Hill, Politico, Politifact, VICE, and NHK.