Gisela Pérez de Acha
ABOUT
Gisela Pérez de Acha is an open source investigative reporter specializing on extremism, disinformation and environmental issues. In 2021 she created a unique partnership between at UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program and its Human Rights Center to teach a first-of-its-kind Open Source Investigative Reporting course at Berkeley Journalism. The class' goal was to train journalists how to leverage public social media information to keep power accountable while staying safe online. Gisela won a Polk Award for her work in Frontline's film American Insurrection and was also part of an Emmy award-winning team at the New York Times for a story about The Siege of Culiacán. She left UC Berkeley in 2025 and is currently writing a book while working as a cybersecurity expert and a digital safety trainer with PEN America. Born and raised in Mexico, Gisela was trained as a lawyer before becoming a journalist and speaks fluent Spanish, English, French and Portuguese.
STORIES
 The AP | US-expelled Haitians fuel charter business to Latin America |  Reveal | The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion |  Reveal | A Strike at the Heart of Roe |
|---|---|---|
 Frontline | American Insurrection |  El País | “Sentí más odio que nada”: la historia de un militar de Estados Unidos que quiso iniciar una guerra civil |  ProPublica | “I Felt Hate More Than Anything”: How an Active Duty Airman Tried to Start a Civil War |
 Human Rights Center | Crisis in Chile: An OSINT Inquiry. |  Washington Post | ‘Control Z’: la serie de Netflix muestra los fallos de la seguridad digital (y los clichés) |  New York Times | The Plan to Rescue El Chapo’s Son: Chaos, Guns and Fear |
 Aristegui Noticias | Faltan pruebas y subestiman número de contagios de Covid-19 en México |  Aristegui Noticias | Los "narcobloqueos" en Culiacán |  Medium | White Mexican director wins an Oscar for Roma … Mexican feminists debate. |
 Vice | La Muerte de Charlie Hebdo |
TV & CONFERENCES
ACADEMIA
RESEARCH PAPER: An analysis of Twitter political bots’ tactics in targeting the immigration debate before the 2018 U.S. midterm election
2022
Our findings reveal that the 10 most influential bots in our dataset all presented an anti-immigration viewpoint, and both posted original tweets and retweeted other bot accounts’ tweets to give a false sense of authenticity and anti-immigration consensus.
RESEARCH PAPER: Digital Gender Gap in Mexico.
2018
Technology is much more than technical knowledge: it is a political space. Disconnecting has social and economic
implications for everyone in the information society. In this paper, the World Wide Web Foundation researches the digital gender gap in Mexico as well as some of its roots and causes.
UPCOMING PUBLICATIONS
Using Artificial Intelligence and Satellite Imagery to Find Mass Graves in Mexico.
Leveraging Geographic Information Software (GIS) and Open Source methods to investigate two high-profile murders of environmental activists in Brazil.