LONDON — Leaked documents and interviews with whistle-blowing sources will always be a part of investigative journalism. But thanks to the rise of digital technology, and the easy availability of data that has gone with it, reporters have more ways to get stories than ever before.

“You can be on your couch in front of your computer and solve a mystery of a missile system downing a plane,” said Aliaume Leroy, a journalist who is part of the BBC’s Africa Eye team.

Internet sleuths who piece together stories from available data, a practice known as open-source journalism, have helped identify the white nationalists who assaulted counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va.; unmask the Russian intelligence officers who the British government said tried to kill a fellow Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury, England; and show that the suspects in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul included associates of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince.

With its emphasis on raw facts, open-source journalism has an immediacy that is effective at a time when readers all along the ideological spectrum have become skeptical of the news media.