Open-source investigations (OSINT) techniques and methods are changing the parameters of digital journalism. The field’s practitioners consist of both the ‘insiders’ of traditional journalism and the ‘outsiders’ of civil society organisations and actors more often associated with human rights activism. Their parallel, often intertwining experiments with digital investigations tools serve as a gateway between established epistemological norms in traditional journalism and a whole new field of participatory citizen journalism enabled by ubiquitous access to technology. This PhD project views OSINT’s novel use of everyday apps, databases and software as an extension of the inherent journalistic desire to visualise facts and data points – instances of societal injustice, atrocities, corruption, financial crime – that might otherwise remain invisible.
The project aims to provide policymakers, academics, media producers and journalists at both big and small outlets a working theoretical framework for mainstreaming OSINT into the newsroom, be it as a state-of-the-art investigations tool, a disinformation blocker, the basis for advanced interface design and societal impact, or simply to re-connect with audiences and boost engagement. Incorporating affected citizens and their user-generated online content, OSINT manifests a bottom-up dynamic that turns on its head society’s reliance on Big Tech for innovation. The innovation lies instead with both citizen- and professional journalists who use everyday tools as methods of resistance, harnessing the ethos of transparency central to open-source communities to cut through the noise of fake news and online dissimulation, holding the powerful to account.
This dynamic returns the democratic function to journalism at a time when faith in traditional media is under severe threat. As a technologically advanced form of reciprocal journalism, OSINT is a practice premised on radical transparency and grassroots interventions. This PhD project tracks how those interventions are mainstreamed across the journalistic spectrum, from the underlying “supply” layer of civil society organisations, through the “experimental” layer of advanced research and design units, and onward toward the “popularisation” layer of major newsrooms. At each step of this process, the project aims to scan the wider socio-technical landscape for signs of impact – the applications of OSINT innovations that live on, providing the foundations for the next journalistic investigation, or else forging a navigable path for engaged citizens to continue their own involvement in specific projects.
Will Fee is a PhD fellow working under the supervision of Associate Professor Christoph Raetzsch at the Department of Media and Journalism Studies, Aarhus University. Before moving to Denmark to begin his PhD, he spent five years in Tokyo. There he covered politics, finance, tech and society as a reporter and analyst for various Japanese and international news organisations. He holds an MPhil in Japanese Studies from Oxford University and an MA in Comparative Literary Studies from Goldsmiths College.
