# Investigative Journalism

> Investigative Journalism is mapped as the signal: it selects, frames, verifies, amplifies, distracts, and archives political reality.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:media-information:investigative-journalism` |
| Family | Media & Information Power |
| Domain | Information |
| Kind | mechanism |
| Archetypal function | The Signal |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Investigative Journalism belongs to the **Media & Information Power** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Investigative Journalism selects, frames, verifies, amplifies, distracts, and archives political reality, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Investigative Journalism, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Signal.** Investigative Journalism is mapped as the signal: it selects, frames, verifies, amplifies, distracts, and archives political reality.

## Gift

makes distant action public and enables accountability; through Investigative Journalism, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

rewards outrage, ownership power, propaganda, and attention capture; Investigative Journalism can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Investigative Journalism to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Signal enters through Investigative Journalism. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Investigative Journalism becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**constraint.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Investigative Journalism; another player names a countermove. Initiative 2.

## Relationships

- **constrains — Journalism:** Journalism constrains Investigative Journalism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **legitimizes — Editorial:** Investigative Journalism legitimizes Editorial by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **amplifies — Affirmative Action:** Investigative Journalism amplifies Affirmative Action by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **translates into — Popular Front:** Popular Front translates into Investigative Journalism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Investigative Journalism from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Investigative Journalism is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Investigative Journalism: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [Guidance for Regulation of Digital Platforms](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000387339) — UNESCO, 2023. Platform governance, expression, information integrity, and rights.
- [Church Committee Reports](https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm) — U.S. Senate, 1975–1976. Investigations of intelligence abuses and subsequent oversight reforms.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
