unparroted · independent research studio
We investigate the issues that shape people, planet and profit, gather the evidence ourselves and turn it into films you will actually want to finish.
Evidence, not echoes.
More views have not made us better informed.
Most of what we watch is a copy of a copy, made fast and made to be shared.
The research that could change your mind is still sitting in long reports almost nobody opens.
We go back to the source, find what is genuinely new, and make it hard to scroll past.
Entertaining, yes. But above all, worth thinking about.
Evidence, not echoes.
01 / focus
The stories that matter rarely sit in one box. A data centre is a jobs story, a water story and an investment story all at once. We choose issues where all three meet, and we follow the evidence across each of them.
on our research list, in no particular order
02 / method
We spent close to a decade writing research for people who needed answers. The method stays. The format is what changes.
01data
Public posts, government records, company disclosures, local news in local languages. Most of it is messy and unstructured, the kind of material traditional surveys never reach. AI tools now let us collect and sort it at a scale that used to take a team months, from classifying thousands of long comments to tracking how public sentiment shifts over time. Then we test what we find, the slow and careful way.
02ground
Numbers tell you that something changed. People tell you what it cost. We travel to the places behind the data and sit down with the people living it, with their consent and on their terms.
03picture
Every finding becomes a frame. Charts that build as you watch, documents you can lean into, voices you can hear. Engaging enough to finish, sharp enough to stay with you after.
Every film is published with its sources. All of them.
03 / films
Everything you have heard about data centres is a carefully told story. We followed the land, the water and the money behind India's AI boom, starting in Visakhapatnam.
Read the brief
AI is rewriting job descriptions faster than anyone can retrain. We look at who is really losing work, who is gaining it, and what the evidence says about the skills that last.
Read the briefwhere each film stands
04 / formats
The full investigation, built to be watched to the end.
The sharpest findings, cut for the scroll, each one pointing back to its source.
A weekly series on AI: where it helps, where it goes wrong, how it works, and how to use it well.
05 / origin
For close to a decade, we have worked in research and consulting. We have studied things most people never look at closely: people who inject drugs, hydrogen cars, green steel, garment workers in Bangladesh, low carbon farming in India. That work was used by UN agencies, development banks, reinsurers and international organisations across Asia and Africa, and it regularly appeared in well recognised outlets.
What has changed is how people take in information. More of us now want the answer quickly, in a form we can watch, share and come back to. Long reports still matter, but they are no longer the only way to reach people, and often not the best one.
AI has changed our own work too. Collecting and analysing data that once took months now takes weeks. That leaves more time for the part that matters most: talking to people, testing what we find, and getting it in front of the people it affects.
So we are keeping the method and adding a new medium. Unparroted is where careful research meets the way people watch today. It began alongside our day jobs, and we are building it to grow into something much bigger.
06 / standards
If we say it on screen, we can show you where it came from. The full list sits under every film.
When we build our own dataset, we explain how we collected it, what we left out and where it might be wrong.
When we get something wrong, we fix it and say so, on the film page and in the video description.
They fund the work. They do not see scripts before release, review findings or shape conclusions.
Everyone we interview gives informed consent. We protect identities when asked, and we never trade someone's safety for a better shot.
We use AI to gather and sort material. Every fact that reaches the screen is checked by a person against the original.
07 / people
founder
Turns large, messy evidence into things people can actually use.
intern, content delivery
Economics aspirant exploring how small and medium enterprises in Kerala work, with a soft spot for visual storytelling.
Researches how the systems economies run on can cut carbon and go digital.
Works where decarbonisation, sustainability and digital systems meet.
Contributors take part in a personal capacity. Their views here are their own and not those of their employers.
08 / work with us
We do not sell products and we will not promote them. We look for partners who already care about the issue we are investigating, such as foundations, research institutions, civic organisations and impact funds, and who want careful, independent work to reach a far wider audience.
Support an investigation into an issue close to your work. You get credit, early access to findings and the public dataset. You do not get a say in the conclusions.
Researchers, journalists and institutions with data, field contacts or deep knowledge of a topic. Let's compare notes.
Living with an issue we should look into? Write to us. We read everything, and we protect the people who talk to us.
Write to us at connect at unparroted dot com