From Gatekeeper to Gate-opener: Open-Source Spaces in Investigative Journalism

ABSTRACT

The up-and-coming phenomenon of open source in journalism lead by non-journalistic actors like Airwars, Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture and Syrian Archive has brought an entirely new dynamic to investigative journalism. These actors share and rely heavily on an open-source ideology. With novel methods and tools, they integrate a new set of actors, competencies, and technology into journalistic practice, renegotiating and transcending professional boundaries. For the genre of investigative journalism, they can in many ways be leading the development of methodology as well as ideology; but how? This article addresses this question based on in-depth interviews with an exclusive selection of key informants from these networks. The study is theoretically framed by conceptualizations of collaboration, professional identity, and open-source logic. The results show that, sustained by networked technology, new open-source practices are rapidly emerging in the field of investigative journalism. These practices interrupt professional exclusivity on the one hand, but on the other, they seem to reinforce values of public interest, democracy, and accountability with the help of completely new actors. The open-source investigators thus transform the traditional role of the journalist as “controller” and “gatekeeper” into an enabler of free collaboration, opening “gates” towards new spaces and actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Open source
• investigative journalism
• collaborative journalism
• networked journalism
• professional identity
• journalistic methods
• journalistic boundaries

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.