Today The Guardian began the first day of its week-long "Reading the Riots" coverage, which addresses the causes of the riots that took place in England in August. The project draws on months of research undertaken by a team of 60 people, including Guardian journalists, academics from the London School of Economics and specially selected interviewers.

It is worth noting that this piece of invaluable investigative reporting, which aims to expose the causes of the largest displays of civil unrest in the UK for a generation, was financed with the aid of foundations, The Rowntree and The Open Society Foundations in particular. It is interesting to note that investigative projects like this one, are often reliant on charitable funding in this way.

Here is what the research team accomplished:

The investigation, which involved interviewing 270 people involved with the riots along with extensive analysis of Twitter messages, took 3 months to complete, as testimony from each of the participants was analysed and codified to identify common themes. The end result of this process was a comprehensive list of reasons for why the riots happened from the very people who felt the need to take to the streets this summer.

The project includes a data visualisation showing the distance travelled by those involved to reach various centres of the riots in cities across the UK. The average distance travelled by participants in the riots was 2.2 miles, with variants across individual cities.

The research challenged conventional wisdom around the causes of the riots. The government stance on the riots was that "street gangs" were at the heart of the problem, when in fact the brief video summary of the research show that the riots helped erase gang tensions, where they were present. The majority of participants had no criminal records and were in no way linked to gangs. Many people simply felt as if it was a chance to "get their own back" on the police or simply make money as individuals.

What can journalists and editors take from this initiative? This research shows how vital thorough, investigative reporting projects like this one can be when tackling difficult, complex questions. Perhaps the diverse funding sources of the project reveal how difficult it can be to muster the resources to embark upon a project of this nature, but "Reading the Riots" is a prime example of public interest journalism that attempts to address a very pertinent social issue.

Sources: The Guardian (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), The Press Gazette