Copyright: 4toscenethesis, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED)
A Digital storytelling Archive
The "Saving the Osun River Project" is a digital archive that transforms how environmental investigations are conducted and preserved. This digital archive consolidates a decade of scattered materials such as investigative reports, environmental assessments, and activist documentation from 2015 to 2025, all focused on the pollution affecting the Osun River and the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove .
By employing text transcription, metadata tagging, mapping, and topic modeling methodologies, the archive creates a searchable format that identifies key thematic patterns and amplifies the authentic voices of underreported locals that have shaped the story. The project also makes use of visualization tools to create digital tools that serve different stakeholders: StoryMaps for general audiences, technical maps for policymakers, interactive data for researchers, and real-time monitoring for communities.
By bringing together these diverse sources into a unified digital platform, the project bridges traditional journalism's temporal limitations by creating a platform that serves both historical understanding and contemporary efforts, by taking them from just reporting; limited by timestamps, to timeless and relevant pieces for both old and new audiences who get to interact with journalistic works.
This digital archive builds upon the award-winning documentary "Saving the Osun River" (2022) and lays the foundation for making environmental information more accessible through digital storytelling.
Using Knight Lab's StoryMap platform, this interactive journey traces the 267-kilometer flow of the Osun River from its headwaters through central Yorubaland to the Lagos Lagoon. Each point along the river tells a crucial part of the story.
This project documents the visible transformation of the Osun River ecosystem over ten years (2015-2025). Explore and find out what's new with concrete evidence using satellite imagery, documents, proof of mining expansion, seasonal variations and recovery efforts.
This presentation synthesizes years of investigative work into a dynamic, interconnected exploration of the multiple pollution sources, health implications, stake holders perspectives, and soultions.