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

Introduction

An image composed of gray pixels shows a bomb cloud from above, taken from a satellite, capturing the explosion of a house, and with that the death of a human being. These are pictures of war and conflict in the twenty-first century, of battlefields which sometimes take place—from a Western perspective—in the remotest areas of the globe. Despite the remoteness and inaccessibility of these dangerous battlefields, journalists can still follow the conflict, every day, maybe even every minute or second. Not only by heavily pixeled satellite imagery but also in via photos, audio recordings and videos—in high resolution, in high fidelity. All this is made possible by recent digital developments, especially smart phones and sharing platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. With these inventions, people in conflict zones share their experiences on the World Wide Web, potentially to be explored by anybody. In no time in history has the conflict been documented in such detail as the wars of today. And not only wars. Surveillance cameras, blogs, and other publicly available information these days enable tracking of criminal, corrupt, and violent occurrences. In the context of clarification big data, with all its risks concerning private integrity, offers a wide range of potentials.

Journalists, and especially investigative reporters, explore the massive amount of easily accessible data material as well as other new technical possibilities. Not only do these innovations provide new tools, methods, and meeting points to conduct advanced investigations, they also offer novel formats and spaces for publishing. More practically, processes of researching material and collaborating with other investigators become possible across borders, via international teams, and in great distances. Furthermore, collaborations on such complex materials demand additional competencies, causing new constellations of interprofessional teams to emerge.

Long-standing news media organisations, usually perceived as highly competitive, are currently exploring a new phenomenon of collaboration, experiencing an open-source momentum led by non-journalistic investigators. Some of the most compelling collectives and agencies are Airwars, Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture, and Syrian Archive. These new actors on the journalism stage apply novel methods and tools in investigations of crime and violence. They, depending on their different specializations, produce investigative archives, reports, and journalistic pieces as well as exhibitions. To reach out to the public, they collaborate with news media and with different legal, social, or even artistic registers, in sum offering a variety of intersections with other fields and disciplines.

Open-source actors are still under-researched. To our knowledge, Airwars, Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture, and Syrian Archive have received very little scholarly attention, especially within the field of journalism studies. In journalistic practice, however, they are repeatedly cited sources and therefore represent a shift from competitive to collaborative work and the practical usage of open-source methods. These agencies have already had an impact on investigative reporting, and they may certainly stand as role models for future developments in journalistic practice and science.

This article focuses on their collaborative work within the field of investigative journalism. It will explore how these open-source agencies work, which tools they use and how they play a vital role in the processes and productions of journalism. It will also show how people from originally non-journalistic fields such as architecture, law, film making, design, the military, or art bypass investigative and journalistic limitations and contribute to a creative contemporary media production assisted by the public and for the sake of society.

The main research questions are:

1. How do open-source actors integrate journalism with other skills and values in collaborative networks?

2. How are journalistic boundaries being negotiated in the collaborations between open-source actors and legacy news media?

3. How are the processes of collaborative open-source investigations being sustained by digital communication technologies and online media?

The study addresses these questions based on empirical support from interviews with representatives of the above-mentioned organizations as well as the legacy news media with which they are collaborating. As the selected interviewees are currently at the forefront of implementing open-source methods in newsrooms, they are likely to be the ones setting new standards in newsrooms for the future.

The Open-source Actors

The actors in focus for this study were selected for their pioneering role in the open-source investigation and their high name recognition. All of them have a leading authority on topics around conflict and violence. Airwars, Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture, and Syrian Archive receive public recognition as they are mentioned in many international news media such as the New York Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, the Guardian, the BBC, and many more. They have appeared as contributors or informants, but they are also portrayed in the form of features or interviews. Affiliated with Goldsmiths, University of London, Airwars and Forensic Architecture also have an established role in academia. Similar criteria are applied to the legacy media involved in this study: the interviewees employed by the New York Times and BBC firstly represent trustworthy reporting and, secondly, media organizations which can be described as early adopters of open-source methods.

Bellingcat was founded by Eliot Higgins in 2014 with the help of private donations acquired via a Kickstarter project. Since March 2012, the former British blogger was publishing about weapons systems used in the civil war in Syria under the pseudonym Brown Moses. Today the collective works with international researchers, investigators, and citizen journalists from more than 20 countries. With publicly available data, social media, and open-source methods, its team investigates a variety of subjects including conflict, crime, and human rights abuses. Investigations by Bellingcat are repeatedly published by international news media. For instance, the team was involved in the awarded BBC Africa Eye investigation, “Anatomy of a Killing”. Bellingcat claims to be independent. The collective is currently a partner in the Open Information Partnership and part of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. Moreover, it is in partnership with the Global Legal Action Network as part of the Yemen Project. Currently, Bellingcat receives grants from Porticus, Adessium, The National Endowment for Democracy, The Dutch Postcode Lottery, Auxilium, Zandstorm CV. According to Bellingcat, around 35% of the budget is currently raised from worldwide-held workshops.

Forensic Architecture was founded in 2011 by Eyal Weizman, professor of spatial and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is based at the same university. The agency specialises in advanced spatial and media investigations exploring state and corporate violence, human rights violations, and worldwide environmental destruction. The interdisciplinary team—composed of architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, artists, scientists, and lawyers—locates and analyses photographs, videos, audio files, and testimonies. The agency is part of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court. They collaborate with academic and cultural institutions as well as with media organisations, and their work has been published by international media. According to its own specifications, the agency is supported by various grants such as the ERC: European Research Council, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Open Society Foundations and Oak Foundation, the David & Elaine Potter Foundation, and more. They also receive income from commissioned investigations and exhibitions. Forensic Architecture claims that all income generated is used to support ongoing research and that the founding institutions do not influence their projects.

Founded in 2014 by the investigative reporter Chris Woods, Airwars is a collaborative, non-profit transparency organisation with the aim to track, assess and archive military actions and related civilian harm claims in conflict zones such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The team includes researchers and analysts. The headquarters of Airwars is based in London where it is affiliated with the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. Airwars additionally works with contributors based in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and North America. With the intention of reducing battlefield casualties, Airwars additionally works with militaries. Moreover, they work with journalists and researchers in the field helping them to identify reported civilian harm claims. The organisation draws on several sources such as international and local news agencies and NGOs, social media sites, Facebook pages, YouTube footage, and tweets. Airwars, claiming to maintain independence, are funded by philanthropic organisations and by public donations as well as with pro bono contributions from volunteers. Support comes from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Open Society Foundations, the Democracy, and Media Foundation/Stichting Democratie en Media, the Reva and David Logan Foundation, and the J. Leon Foundation.

Hadi Al Khatib, an archivist and activist, founded the Syrian Archive in 2014. His current team consists of researchers, journalists, technologists, and digital security experts. Their intention is to support human rights investigators, advocates, media reporters, and journalists in their efforts to document human rights violations in Syria and worldwide. This goal shall be reached by the development of new open-source tools and by providing a transparent and replicable methodology for collecting, preserving, verifying, and investigating visual documentation in conflict areas. Their research methodology is based on three core principles. The first is the discovery of relevant information sources and their aggregation in a structured form. The second principle is to secure long-term preservation to ensure the material will continue to be available for analysis. The third principle includes verification, cataloguing, and metadata enrichment. The collective claims to be fully independent, not accepting any funding from governments directly involved in the Syrian conflict. A small amount of funding in the past came from the NGO Alternatives International. An additional source of financial support was granted by The Prototype Fund project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany.

Competitive Becomes Collaborative

Professional journalism is fundamentally rooted in collective ideals of autonomy, ethics, public interest, and trust (Deuze 2005; Wiik 2020). However, as journalism is commercially driven, there has always been a competitive force as well. Competition also arises as a product of the meritocratic system underpinning journalism as a profession. In the striving for professional status and legitimacy, factors such as university training, professional values, and expertise have become key features (Wiik 2010, 2014). In the networked society of today, these features are increasingly being challenged as news production has become a public domain. The complexity of society is another factor calling for openness and transparency among journalists. Covering global issues of, for example, institutionalized politics, climate change, and migration raises the demand for new competencies and understandings among news producers. This development has gained interest among scholars as well as professionals (e.g., Alfter 2019; Konow-Lund 2019; Konow-Lund, Gearing, and Berglez 2019; Sambrook 2018). One single journalist cannot meet those demands individually; instead, collaboration becomes the new way.

The Collaborative Turn in Investigative Journalism

The image of the lonely journalist, working late hours in the empty office with a pen stuck behind the ear may still be valid, but solitude is nowadays more physical. Online, the investigative journalist is connected to a wide network of colleagues, often working on the same data and collectively creating stories. The colleagues may be journalists or members of other professions, but investigative stories increasingly call for joint efforts and competencies. Carson and Farhall (2018) describe how investigative reporting, while confronted with digital disruptions and several economic and trust-related challenges, stands out with collaborative scoops of worldwide relevance. Based on cases such as the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe which investigated sex abuse in the Catholic church, and the international cooperation of journalists who investigated the Panama Papers revealing tax fraud with global dimensions, they picture a shift from an old competitive newsrooms model (Spotlight) to a more collaborative one (Panama Papers). Their study shows that the same conditions allowing the viral spread of fake news, like internet connectivity or many-to-many digital networks, are also enabling the trend toward collaborative work between multiple newsrooms (1901). What they also illustrate is how sharing of information can lead to extraordinary investigative success.

Journalism is, however, not entirely comfortable with a more networked model when it comes to collaboration with non-journalistic actors. Benkler (2011) already predicted a relatively difficult development towards “regular collaboration.” These findings were confirmed by Eldridge II (2018) in an analysis of WikiLeaks. He noted that the media still takes an exclusive and authoritative role when mentioning collaborators like WikiLeaks and ProPublica in their reporting. While ProPublica got more nuanced descriptions, Wikileaks is rather described as a “source” and less as a collaborative partner (21).

Open-source Logic and Collective Intelligence

Journalistic professionalism may constitute an important shield to deteriorations of journalism and “a refuge to critical rationality, accountability and transparency” (Waisbord 2013, 226). The systematics, ethical coherence, and democratic legitimacy of journalism are difficult to replicate. According to van der Haak, Parks, and Castells (2012), there is still a need for professional processing and understanding of information as well as a major need for professional storytelling. They mean that “the networked journalism of the digital age is not a threat to the independence and quality of professional journalism, but a liberation from strict corporate control” (2935). Nevertheless, Deuze and Witschge (2018) argue that a renewed understanding of journalism in its contemporary liquid shape calls for a focus on becoming rather than of being, thus acknowledging the processual and relational nature of these heterogeneous activities. To revitalize, Zelizer (2017) means that journalism needs to be proactive on several crucial points: a clarified bottom-up perspective, the invitation to a multiplicity of practices and expanding public engagement with journalism into different modes of interactivity. The collaborative networks such as Airwars, Forensic Architecture, Bellingcat, and Syrian Archive integrate not only software developers and other tech-people into news production but an extended range of professions, such as architects, military personnel, and artists. These actors would previously have been considered as sources but are now crucial for the analytical as well as the presentational work of the investigations.

The question of how these outsiders and their expertise are being integrated to established news production processes has been the core of a growing number of studies (e.g., Eldridge II 2019; Holton and Belair-Gagnon 2018). Eldridge II (2018) discovers two reactions in journalism; the first is resistance, while the second embraces change. Due to a process of normalization journalists incorporate new technologies into their norms and routines, which otherwise would “challenge their primacy to fit within extant professional norms” (4). In general, research shows that the journalistic establishment behaves stepmotherly towards new actors in the field, treating newcomers as “unwelcome strangers” (Holton and Belair-Gagnon 2018, 71). But there are positive examples of interdisciplinary collaborations. Those can bring together designers and journalists to enhance storytelling (Doherty 2016) or technologists and journalists as in the open-source technology organization Hacks/Hackers (Lewis and Usher 2014). Founded in 2009 with the aim “to rethink the future of news and information” (384), Hacks/Hackers offers a role model for successful collaboration between journalists (hacks) and technologists (hackers). This journalistic-technologic collaboration represents a kind of peer relationship in which journalists appreciate the contributions of the audiences, creating a logic of hybridity, symbiosis, and synergy (Lewis 2012).

According to Holton and Belair-Gagnon (2018), journalistic change tends to emerge from the edges to the mainstream. Their research shows that newcomers indeed may represent great value for journalism, bringing with them remarkable, innovative know-how. The entrance of these strangers to journalism is “importing qualities to it that do not originally stem from the journalistic profession” and thus “helped to introduce new ways of identifying what news is, how to deliver it more effectively, and how to better engage with news audience” (72). Organizations or networks such as Bellingcat or Forensic Architecture are what Lowrey, Sherrill, and Broussard (2019) call “ancillary,” meaning a wide range of organizations working in the border zone of journalism—being outsiders yet very important actors. According to them, “ancillary organizations act offstage (or at least not central stage) in the performance of media production. However, […] they play critical roles in the processes by which new things gain perceived value, legitimation and resource support” (2132).

The elitist or exclusive attitude of journalism has not only “contributed to a mindset of content control” but also to a lack of understanding of the concerns of everyday people (Lewis 2012, 844). The emerging philosophy of open source and collaboration offers some remedy to this. For instance, the New York Times journalist Surowiecki (2004) stresses the “wisdom of the crowds” as carrying a certain anti-elitist, democratic spirit. It is based on the idea of collective intelligence which can “address collective concerns” and “solve group problems” (Lewis 2012, 848). Also, Muthukumaraswamy (2010) brings the concept of collective wisdom of crowds together with journalism. She focuses on the practice of crowdsourcing, as “a collaborative effort between a news organization and its audience” (50). Muthukumaraswamy argues that “people can provide good eyes and ears, but the job of putting together a story is that of the journalist” (58). Although crowdsourcing demands coordination and oversight, the advantages should not be dismissed. It convinces by its “sheer power of numbers” which guarantees transparency, accuracy, and credibility (Muthukumaraswamy 2010, 50).

The field of innovation increasingly centers knowledge sourcing across boundaries as an important drive for innovation performance (Dahlander and Gahn 2010; West and Bogers 2014). An extensive meta-analysis of this field of research has indicated that organizations or networks drawing upon diversity in work history and educational background will have a positive impact on performance (Bogers, Foss, and Lyngsie 2017). A high level of educational background means increased capability on the part of the organization to identify and absorb relevant knowledge from external sources, pointing to openness as an important attribute in successful innovative work.

For a further exploration of collaborative models in media, and how these are sustained by technological innovations, Lewis and Westlund’s (2015) model of actors, actants, audiences and activities is relevant. The model explains the interconnections among humans (actors), technology (actants) and recipients (audience) in the context of contemporary cross-media news work. These actors, actants and audiences are interrelated by routinised acts which give media practices a shape (activities). In a later article, Lewis, Guzman, and Schmidt (2019) elaborate on the actant perspective in this news ecology. They mean that to fully understand the professional dynamic of journalism scholars need to recognize the inherent logics of machines and data-driven automation. In the context of open-source investigations, the interplay of technological affordances, specialist competencies and audience data are collaboratively treated and shaped into cutting-edge stories.

If global scale collaborations between newsrooms are effective and crowdsourcing already plays a central role in the news, how could this networked-based model establish and develop in the future? The boundaries between actors, actants, and audiences are becoming increasingly porous, evolving media production in a collaborative interaction. This reciprocity represents a far-reaching intervention in journalism’s jurisdiction, methods, and boundary work. In this study, we explore the interface of individual components of journalism; the actors, actants, audiences and actions, with the intention of deriving future potential open-source influences for investigative journalism. The empirical research on open-source experts from Airwars, Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture and Syrian Archive will show these findings in practice.

Study Design

The empirical study is based on six interviews with representatives of the selected organizations: Bellingcat, Airwars, Forensic Architecture, and Syrian Archive. We have chosen the method of expert interviews, as the topic of open source is a relatively new occupational field which has been studied only to a limited extent so far. The interviews explore the motivations, perspectives, and experiences of this small group of open-source professionals. Moreover, they get the opportunity to give detailed information, and the resulting material should thus be evaluated intensively. The interviews were conducted between April 2019 and January 2020 in a semi-structured way, which means that the questions were predefined but left open to a certain extent. Hence, the order of questions could vary, and interviewees were free to answer in their own manner.

Selection of Experts

We consciously decided on a very small number of interviewees. The field of open source journalism is still relatively new, and only a small number of renowned and internationally successful working agencies exist. However, our scope is limited to the Anglo-American sphere, which means there are potentially (and very likely) relevant actors in other linguistic contexts.

Although some of the participants of the empirical study, due to new management roles, do not primarily perform journalistic work anymore, they are all investigative journalists or investigators originally. Also, all of them are working in the context of open source. One group works directly for Airwars, Bellingcat, and Forensic Architecture. Two interviewees (Benjamin Strick and Christiaan Triebert) used to work for open-source agencies and are now employed by media organizations. In two cases, they are the founders and chief executives of the agencies discussed here. It was important for the writers of this article to establish a certain gender equality. The agency founders are all men, but the field is not male dominated. Other sexes also play crucial roles. Gabriela Ivens (Syrian Archive) will stand as an example here.

This combination of interview partners working in different agencies and functions strives for the completest possible picture, with which both sides, legacy media, and open-source agencies, should be discussed and understood as widely as possible.

Interviewees

Eliot Higgins is the founder and manager of Bellingcat. Previously working in finance and administration, he became known on account of his activities as a citizen journalist in his former blog Brown Moses in which he reported on deployed weapons systems in the civil war in Syria. Higgins, for instance, has investigated the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine, the Skripal revelation and lately the Oman tanker attacks.

Gabriela Ivens is the head of open-source research at Human Rights Watch. Ivens previously worked at Syrian Archive, a Ford-Mozilla fellow hosted by WITNESS and led the investigative portal Exposing the Invisible. She holds a master’s in human rights from University College London.

Before joining the BBC Africa Eye team as an open-source investigator, Benjamin Strick worked as a volunteer for Bellingcat. He has a background in law and the military and focuses on human rights abuses, conflict, security, and arms. Strick also works as an open-source instructor and investigator with the EU Arms workshops. He contributed to the “Anatomy of a Killing” reportage, for which his team received the Peabody Award.

Robert Trafford was a freelance journalist for media like the Intercept, the Times, and the Independent before becoming a member of Forensic Architecture. At the agency, he is mainly responsible for open-source research, data mining and analysis. Trafford studied philosophy and theology at Jesus College, University of Oxford and completed a master’s degree in investigative journalism at City University of London.

Today Christian Triebert is a full-time journalist for the New York Times. Before that he worked as a contributor for Bellingcat and Airwars. In this study, Triebert is speaking on the personal title, not on behalf of the New York Times. After studying international relations and political philosophy at the University of Groningen, he obtained a master’s degree in conflict, security, and development from King’s College London. In 2017, he was awarded the European Press Prize’s Innovation Award.

Chris Woods is an investigative journalist as well as the founder and Director of Airwars. He leads research, investigations, and military advocacy. For many years, Woods worked for the BBC’s Newsnight and Panorama as a senior producer and set up as well as ran the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Drones Project. Woods is the author of the book Sudden Justice which deals with the use of armed drones.

The different functions of the interviewees and their agencies’ profiles led to different thematic emphases. This meant, for instance, that some interviewees referred to politics, while others tended to focus on artistic aspects. However, the advantages of the chosen semi-structured interview outweighed other options as it left room for profound explorations and unexpected findings.

RQ 1: How do open source actors integrate journalism with other skills and values in collaborative networks?

Journalism is sometimes described as a calling, a profession driven by motifs more noble than mere profit and individual status. The core ideals of autonomy and public interest protect the profession from external influences—at least in theory. In the current development of the investigative field, open-source actors enter journalism, pushing its boundaries. How do they themselves perceive their role and jurisdiction in this evolving practice? To use the words of Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman (Franke and Weizman 2014, 71), the first question here will be: Should open-source actors have the “legal authority or right” for “speech” in journalism?

Concerning this topic, the interviewed open-source actors show clear intersections with but also clear limitations with respect to journalism. Their main driver is idealism, the wish to make a change and to serve a social good, and they connect it with different skills. Benjamin Strick (BBC) explains that in all his former professions—in the military and in law—he was driven by human rights aspects: “It is towards the same cause of helping people who are in disastrous areas, involved in conflict or human rights breaches. That is where the passion stems from.” Gabriela Ivens (Syrian Archive) describes her occupation as twofold. She calls herself an open-source investigator. While she studied human rights and worked in a war tribunal, she also became interested in data and technology: “I see myself as a technologist as well. I spend a lot of time testing things and learning new skills. And like I've taught myself how to code and things like this. So, I'm kind of between the two different worlds.”

However, the drivers can also be less philanthropic but rather light-hearted. Strick (BBC) talks about a playful element in geolocation and Eliot Higgins (Bellingcat) describes his early investigations as “a fun thing to do” and “like a little puzzle.” The combination of entertainment on the one hand and their political influence on the other is indeed a major asset for the open-source actors. The playful instinct does not affect the integrity of the investigative outcomes of their work; instead, it serves to find new solutions and to create attractive content for the audience. For example, Robert Trafford (Forensic Architecture), who is an investigative journalist by profession, stresses the aspect of storytelling in his projects. He claims that he wants “to push on levers of power that aren’t necessarily easily accessed by everybody by finding stories that are able to create a kind turning moment in a human rights context.”

Other interviewees, however, rather distance themselves from traditional journalism. Higgins (Bellingcat) claims that “all come from an interest that is driven by wanting to understand what happened, not out of making a name by having a big story.” Similarly, Christiaan Triebert (New York Times) says that it is about caring for one’s investigations, but he makes clear that for him

it doesn't matter what you're doing, if it is for the New York Times or for a fucking tweet. It is about whether you really want to get to the bottom. You want to give those extra steps; you keep that curiosity and you want to collaborate.

Another driver of the open-source actors is their perceptions of flaws in journalism or the media in general. The interviewees intend to fill these gaps either with their open-source contributions or with their individual body of knowledge and the practice of that expertise. With their forensic investigations, Forensic Architecture shows that architecture is not only a practice but also a knowledge. The same is true for the former soldier Strick who, with this background, governs a very specialized practice and knowledge. He explains that the weapon insights used for his investigative journalism stem from his previous experiences in the military. Triebert (New York Times) means that the usual 24/7 news cycle often lacks verification and meaning. For him, open source is the answer: “I think our work is almost like an antidote to that. We have a long-form journalism that digs deep and in which an investigation can take up to half a year before it is published.” Ivens states that the Syrian Archive took a conscious decision against being “the kind of 24-hour news agency” that is “reactive to newsworthy events” and for “long-scale investigations.” Syrian Archive is a result of large-scale deletions in social media by self-learning machines. Ivens describes that the reason for founding the agency in 2014 was the incidence in which suddenly a lot of content was removed from YouTube and that the founder Hadi Al-Khatib “found ways to automate the process of capturing it.”

However, open-source verification starts long before the final fact-checking of a story, making the act of fact-checking inherent to the method. Lewis (2012) assumed “that knowledge is richest and most accurate when it reflects the pooled inputs of a distributed population, as opposed to a single agent” (848). Muthukumaraswamy (2010) claims that crowd wisdom is convinced by its “sheer power of numbers” (50). By combining the input of a variety of competencies and actors, the picture becomes more comprehensive. The work of Airwars is one example of this. When Woods refers to the “challenge of the observable,” he describes the phenomenon that modern militaries are incapable of determining most of the civilian harm their own actions cause. He means that one perspective is not enough, that to get “a more rounded understanding of an event” open-source information has a significant value if it is combined with military and research intelligence. Only then one can improve military understanding of civilian harm. Woods uses terms like “people-driven intelligence” or “open-source intelligence” related to the concept of crowd wisdom or the ideal of a source-critical corrective.

RQ 2: How are journalistic boundaries being negotiated in the collaborations between open-source actors and legacy news media?

Open-source actors are, unlike journalists, not restricted to a specific field but can move more freely in between. This floating character and difficulty in labelling create uncertainty in relation to other actors, particularly legacy news media. From the interviews, the established media organizations appear like unmovable colossuses, reactionary, and resistant to new influences. Interviewees call them “granddad,” “old grey lady” or “big ship.” Talking about the BBC, Trafford observes a “slight sort of paternalism” as well as a “reductive” tone when Forensic Architecture is not connected to journalism but to art and activism. As shown in previous research, journalism has so far acted as “a powerful publisher in shaping the news” (Lewis, Kaufhold, and Lasorsa 2010) and even stands for a supremacist attitude. Eldridge II (2018) discovered how the New York Times denied newcomers like WikiLeaks entrance to the news circle by rigorously refraining from calling them journalists.

Woods (Airwars), who has 30 years of journalistic experience, welcomes the new collaborative influences coming from open-source movements. He differentiates between the journalistic genres, but generally perceives investigative journalism as a closed system: “Journalists hold their information, particularly in print journalism. What we used to call print tends to be quite a solo experience. TV investigative journalism is a bit more collaborative because you need a team.” Trafford (Forensic Architecture) sees here a basic conceptual limitation: “There is an essential problem in that open-source reporting is exactly the opposite to what reporting has always been because it is a closed source.” Nevertheless, Strick (BBC), who works in an open-source unit within a legacy media organization, shares this opinion with his open-source fellows when he states: “There are reasons why there is only two of us. Sorry to say that, but the BBC is a very old machine and open source in a place like the BBC is like asking granddad what the latest iPhone is.”

The interviewees jointly address the matter of changing journalistic values, and the open-source actors have contributed to “opening the gate” by the practical and discursive shift away from exclusiveness towards a rather open network. Triebert (New York Times) notes this change in values and that work routines and atmospheres in newsrooms also change towards a more collaborative approach. His team is set up by nontraditional journalists, and he is convinced that a lot of other media are also following open-source trends: “It becomes almost like a hype.” New actors break up old structures or, in other words, they disrupt legacy media boundaries and how the contours of journalism are changing towards a more holistic understanding of norms and practices (Holton and Belair-Gagnon 2018). Interprofessional open-source journalism is very immature, but it indicates the establishment of a new journalistic genre. Woods (Airwars) believes that in five years the new methods will become standard in journalistic practice, stating: “We are seeing an emerging field of forensic journalism and a recognition that these skills are at a premium right now. The collaborations we are seeing today may actually be the in-house investigations of tomorrow.”

Infusing Open-source Logics to Journalism

Lewis (2012) describes the open-source technology organization Hacks/Hackers as a synergetic model built on peer relationship. In the same spirit, Woods (Airwars) refers to synergies in describing collaborations between different open-source actors. He sees a fundamentally different mindset between open source and legacy media actors:

Having a sort of old-fashioned newsroom egotism would make the work in this context really toxic and is something nobody wants to see. Exclusivity matters, we understand that, but among ourselves as open-source agencies, there is maybe a different approach. We will always or usually have an idea of what investigation organization X, Y or Z is involved in. We would never dream of speaking of that publicly and I would only support them in what they would do.

Talking about open source, he highlights a “very refreshing lack of competition.” Instead, sharing is a main principle in the discussed agencies. Woods explains that Airwars, Bellingcat, or Forensic Architecture exchange best practices with each other, technological advances and even staff as their very specialist skill sets are mutually appreciated. Ivens (Syrian Archive) calls the open-source actors a “small ecosystem” that collaborates and does workshops together. “So, there’s a lot of kind of cross interest there. And yeah, I think people have also different outputs in slightly different focuses.”

Sharing represents benefits for the open-source actors. Higgins (Bellingcat) mentions a project between Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture, and Human Rights Watch in which all groups had access to the same material that they were exchanging with each other. Higgins breaks down the sharing process into identifying, verifying, and amplifying. Here sharing became a means against the risk of wrong information. He claims:

The amplification part can be a whole range of different products, and in the end, it can be like a single tweet, a video or a formal report. Because you have already verified the information that you have identified, you can produce these different products on trustworthy information.

Ivens mentions another advantage. The team discovered that their systems developed for collecting, discovering, processing, and verifying as well as investigating was reproducible in situations where materials were lost, removed, or taken down. In that way, the Yemeni Archive and later Sudanese Archive were able to be established. According to Ivens, the individual difficulty is rather identifying the sources and the kind of content that one needs to save, but different archives can share one infrastructure.

RQ 3: How are the processes of collaborative open source investigations being sustained by digital communication technologies and online media?

Early digital influences, particularly the boom of material, sometimes intimidated journalists. In contrast, for open-source actors, the omnipresent data material was not a bane but a boon. It facilitates their work, as it enables amateurs to contribute material to investigative projects or to even do their own investigations—at least to a certain extent. Thus, our interviewees present an enthusiastic view on the digital affordances.

Digitization, according to Higgins (Bellingcat), allows people to unite in completely new and unlimited ways: “So someone in Finland and someone in the US and someone in the UK can work together to figure out what happened to MH 17. And that would have been impossible before.” Similarly, the whole Syrian Archive team is outside of Syria. While a core team is in Berlin, others are based in different European countries. Then, through the Syrian Archive, there are networks of hundreds of journalists, citizen journalists and media houses that assist the Syrian Archive in identifying what media has been taken down and what media should be collected and in helping with contextual questions, especially those concerning investigations and verification. Higgins describes that “we have gone from conflicts that would have been completely remote and barely covered 20 years ago to now where every single day you have a hundred new videos on conflict zones that you can analyze.” Hence, he sees newer digital developments as a “quiet revolution”:

There have been so many technological changes over the last 20 years and especially in the last ten years with the amount of information you can get through Google, for example. We take that for granted. People often ask me what my most important open-source investigation tool is. And it is Google search. It is as simple as that. But it is something everyone uses every single day to find information out. Now one thing in our toolbox allows us to investigate all kinds of things happening across the world.

The infrastructure necessary for collecting to investigating material involves low-cost and sustainable approaches. The Syrian Archive team, for instance, mainly works with a technology called SugarCube, which is an open-source software that automatically scrapes YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram for preidentified content. Through this automatic collection, the teams now have about 3.5 billion videos in the database.

Although technology has always had an important influence on journalism, Lewis and Westlund (2015, 21) state that “humans play a central part in shaping media,” a statement confirmed by our material. The interviewees stress that their work takes advantage of technological intelligence but that it is mainly based on human intelligence and that investigations are always people driven. For instance, Woods (Airwars) points out the following:

We use people rather than algorithms, and there is a reason for that. We find that the monitoring is a very subtle process, and wars are a very fluid phenomenon. Language changes and current locations change sometimes daily. We find that people are far better than machines at learning and tracking where the harm is happening and at identifying challenges and subtleties. We are actually quite a people-focused organization. We do satellite analysis, audio text, visual analysis and so on.

The open-source actors indicate a tension between the collective wisdom of crowds and the specialization of the team members. In contrast to Higgins’ opinion that everybody can become an investigator or that the Syrian Archive involves students, Trafford points out limitations stating that “there is a certain irreconcilable fact” about the way Forensic Architecture and Bellingcat work. At Forensic Architecture “ultimately a lot of work does require architectural training” and their projects are also “mediated by architectural skills.” Thus, he refers to “a high technical bar” that does not allow any kind of amateur to simply imitate their investigative work. Strick (BBC) adds to that: “A lot of open-source investigators are consistently learning new skills. It is not about the tools. A tool we can teach to everybody, but it is about the way you approach a situation.”

Open-logic Storytelling

Investigative journalism has always attached importance to evidence. But there are new challenges in the post-truth era. The “uncensurability” of Internet (McNair 2019, 224) and the fact that “fake news stories spread further and faster through digital technologies” (Carson and Farhall 2018, 1899) puts trust and credibility at stake. The open-source actors are themselves a response to and a product of this development, integrating new ways of displaying evidence supporting their stories.

Storytelling is different in open source compared to classic reporting as the openness often transfers into the actual presentation. Benjamin Strick (BBC), one of the investigators behind the “Anatomy of a Killing” reportage, explains how it came into being:

We had to look at the uniform which we could identify as Cameroon military. We had a look at the weapon, and we could say that these units use it in various areas. Then I joined a Facebook group from the invitation of my college, and we started a crime investigation via Twitter—as to where it is, when it happened and who did it. And we did pretty well—for a group of people that had never met before, none of us has been to Cameroon. One of us spoke French. I could not pick Cameroon out on a map before I looked at this video. I think that is pretty cool, too. From all corners of the globe, this group of about seven people initially started to investigate this video.

Strick shows that open-source investigations are based on videos or images which come from the internet. This challenges new skills for open-source investigators, calling for digital literacy and understanding of how to be creative with virtual content by the analyst. But shared digital material, like the murder video Strick investigated, also demands literacy from the audience, especially against the backdrop of an increasing number of fake pictures and videos. For that reason, the story of “Anatomy of a Killing” was presented as an about 30-tweet long Twitter thread by the BBC in which the reporters navigated through the whole investigation, step by step. Thus, open-source actors try not only to tell a story but also to say what they figured out and how they can verify that. In open-source investigations “the process of finding information is part of the story” and “how you could do it next time.” Trafford (Forensic Architecture) concludes:

You might say the concern of the battlefield is just shifted one step up, that the disputes perhaps remain over facts, X is true, or X is not true. But now we also have a dispute over the methods and how you can show these things to be true. Before the backdrop of a lot of accusation of fakery, we have to defend the methods by which we make the claims.

The open-source actors describe the work of their teams as counternarratives. Mainly, this transparent storytelling method is seen to stop people from questioning one’s findings. Image literacy can, therefore, work as a weapon against fake news. Strick (BBC) states:

We are all going against government narratives. Inevitably after publishing every single video, we will still get a response from the government saying this is wrong, this is disinformation, this is fake news. So, it takes a lot of accountability on us. To build that trust with people, when we know that the governments are already going to say that we are wrong, we are forcing ourselves to show, work out and to lay out everything on the table, bare. I think as we go along, you will see more news firms doing this because disinformation and fake news these days are so common. This is a good strategy to implement because it is very honest and very open.

Hence, it is not only the fact but also the methods behind the facts that are disputed, creating a completely new battlefield for journalistic credibility and storytelling. Trafford (Forensic Architecture) mentions a further ethical concern about the presentation of storytelling and of conceptual ideas. He means that one of the things that favors Forensic Architecture in that fight is the affiliation with the University of London:

That has a lot of restrictions, but it also has a lot of benefits, and first among them is that our work is held to extremely high academic standards and ethical standards, as we are university employees. Also, the university has the duty to protect us, and it has research requirements. The content of our work is rigorously refuted.

He continues discussing the challenge of achieving both transparency and accessibility for vast and complex materials. His agency must often work to make overlapping information comprehensible. In some of the big gallery exhibitions, they are conveying “large amounts of detailed information, often textual information but in an image-led way that makes connections visually,” he explains, and, in that context, he points to the meaning of aesthetics and emotions in their stories:

There is an interesting dimension of aesthetics in Forensic Architecture and that is if we go to the root of the word. We come to “anaesthetic”. Anaesthetic is the state of being unconscious, of not feeling anything. Like that, it becomes clear that the word aesthetics is connected to feelings, to witnessing, to experiencing. Hence, when we talk about aesthetics we also talk about a form of witnessing, and we often talk about material aesthetics, material witnessing.

The “material aesthetics” of Forensic Architecture brings the story into a three-dimensional form, making it visible anon and thus more understandable, comprehensible. In fact, their stories also literally become touchable. In the exhibitions, Forensic Architecture organizes cultural spaces where the team shows parts of their investigations in the form of physical models. A bomb cloud can appear in the form of a sculpture, and a reconstruction of a demolished room can be experienced in 3D. The visitors can then enter the investigation with their whole body and sensual perception.

What does this mean for journalism? Open-source investigators claim that people do not want to be told the evidence but to see it, thus indirectly referring to the journalistic device of “show, don’t tell!” The presentation should help the audience to better identity with the characters of the story. In projects by Forensic Architecture, it even serves to convey a story. The audience almost turns into witnesses.

Conclusion

Based on the expert interviews with representatives of leading open-source agencies, we can identify a hybrid influence of logics. On one hand, there is the open-source logic, based on transparency and the wisdom of crowds, which is ideologically boosted by all interviewees. On the other hand, there is a professional logic of (sometimes) conflicting values, professional exclusivity, and specialization. Those logics are constantly being activated in the holistic experience of the open-source-based collaborative projects where data is open, but the analysis draws upon very specialized competencies. What does this new dynamic mean to journalism, more specifically?

The Actor–Actant Interplay

The influence of disruptive technical innovations is perceived as mostly positive by open-source actors. These innovations can theoretically enable anyone to be an everyday investigator, everywhere, at any time. Nonetheless, it would be misleading to take an ease in the process for granted. In fact, there is an important distinction to be made between finding the data which nowadays is a simple process, and the actual investigative work which requires specific insider knowledge. This can be military or architectural skills or any other kind of knowledge, but it needs to be sound and extensive to be able to support a higher level of investigative work.

According to Strick (Airwars), tools might be self-taught in many open-source cases, but they need to be constantly renewed, and furthermore sustained by skills and creativity. Hence, open-source investigations can only work with people’s expertise. It needs human-driven intelligence to understand transformations and subtleties. All this cannot be replaced by algorithm intelligence. Yet, the interplay of technology paired with human skills in form of the investigator and contributing/sharing amateurs—or one could also say of actors, audiences and actants—offers promising potential for successful open-source work.

So, does the jurisdiction of open source align with the jurisdiction of journalism? From a professional perspective, journalism carries the task of empowering people to make good decisions based on balanced, objective, and trustworthy information. To “speak truth to power” (Lewis 2012, 844), open-source methods could become a key contribution. “The Anatomy of a Killing”, as told by a Twitter thread, was already a ground-breaking way for journalism to tell a story in an unconventional space or auditorium. On the level of storytelling, it was revolutionary: first, as a creative expression using Twitter to tell the story; and second, on the level of transparency, by letting readers understand the investigators’ methods and by that means, teaching them investigative skills. It went beyond anything that was possible before, not only in terms of storytelling but also in terms of its investigative achievement based on a small global team, which up to that point neither knew each other nor had specific knowledge of the case and the country they were investigating. Social media offered a space for the contributors to connect and to present the story.

Lewis and Westlund (2015) state that although technology has exerted an important influence on journalism over the last two decades, “humans play a central part in shaping media” (21). However, we note that in the field of open source, these relationships are shifted to the next level. Technology today enables contributing investigators to connect regardless of their professional backgrounds and via the whole globe—to the most remote areas. Stories like “Anatomy of a Killing” show that they are not limited by physical or even language barriers anymore. Technology now helps to include even more potential collaborators: the actants play a significant role in the gate-opening process and in making the radius of new journalistic actors grow.

The Actor–Audience Interplay

What comes next? Where will news and stories be shown in the future? In an increasingly complex world and against the backdrop of fake news, the narrators are challenged to make sure that people understand and interpret their stories correctly. How can they deal with complexities? First, they can do so by explaining the “how” of the story, letting the audience understand what led to different steps in an investigation. Second, they can choose new formats, like a Twitter thread, for example, which can help to split a story in smaller “bites.” And third, narrators can find new appropriate spaces, that is, physically. Forensic Architecture approaches culture and art spaces where they show large-scale images to convey large amounts of detailed, sometimes intersectional information. They apply an image-led method which makes connections visual—showing, not telling the evidence. Thus, open-source actors are about to form a movement, recruited from a trained digital image and even investigative, literate audience. This will not only improve the quality of investigative reporting but also set the standards higher for investigative journalists.

McLuhan and Fiore (1967) claim that a book is an extension of the eye. Conceptualizing the work of Airwars, Bellingcat, Forensic Architecture, and Syrian Archive in a similar way implies that their use of open-source methods and collaboration is an extension of journalism to the people. Their work not only uses people’s data and intelligence—the wisdom of the crowd—but it also connects to the readers and viewers on a storytelling level, allowing a maximum possible transparency and closeness to them. This enables trust and helps audiences to identify with media. If journalism was once criticized for its supremacist attitude, the application of open-source methods can help to again put the everyday life of society in center of its purpose, extending the audience’s senses through media.

A New Role for Journalists

Which role will the journalist play then? Is the crowd a better journalist? Here the interviewees all share the same point of view: open-source work has an important value for investigations, but it could not replace the journalist. For instance, Higgins claims:

At Bellingcat our arsenals are quite dry and analytical because we are focused on the facts of what we have identified rather than on the story. And I think that is where journalists can come in and turn it into something more than that.

Also, Trafford (Forensic Architecture) thinks that “the world is better if we have both—journalist and the crowd”. He explains:

There are still some things that open-source research will not find. But, as we see time and again, the combination of the two is incredibly powerful, and it is probably the biggest open-source investigation story so far. The perfect example may be the case of Skripal where Bellingcat used open-source reporting and some old-school contacts.

On the other hand, from a methodological perspective, journalism does not remain unaltered. The interprofessional character of the new collaborative networks challenges the exclusivity of journalistic work processes. Whereas journalists used to be gatekeepers, sharing and collaboration has become a necessity. Experts are now being integrated into the team, creating new assets and possibilities for valid and deep-digging stories. This development is a natural evolvement of the increasingly floating journalistic identity. Based on the statements of the open-source actors, we conclude that a new role for journalists is currently being shaped: To act as gate opener for different skills and competencies, perspectives, actors and actants, that is, coordinating collaborations and efforts to forward public interest. The autonomous and ethical stance of journalism, as well as the representation of core publicist ideals, here become crucial assets. And this is an important point: the open-source collaborations may transform the journalistic role, but do not dissolve or discard it. On the contrary, an actual precondition for fruitful multi-competence teamwork is the confidence with one’s own expertise among team members. In fact, “articulating disciplinary and professional identity is important before interprofessional relationships can be successful. It is difficult to form collaborative ties when one is unsure of one’s professional identity” (Dombeck 1997, 15).

A future model for the open-source actors is a balanced mix of journalists on the one hand and open-source investigators with technological and creative skills on the other. Their understanding of open-source activities is a threefold interaction in which actors, actants, and audiences all share equally important roles. Thus, open-source actors strive for a holistic understanding of truth. And this truth needs to be told—by journalists.

Further Research

Current development of investigative journalism deserves much attention from journalism scholars. The open-source actors introduced here may form a small and exclusive cluster but nevertheless proved to have an extensive impact on the wider journalistic field. In this study, we have approached these actors from an exploratory perspective, but there is still much to learn. For instance, there is a need to map the movement of new competencies as well as new technologies into the arena of investigative journalism. Quantification of the field and its movements would be a relevant task for future research. Another interesting area involves traditional journalists’ perceptions of this open-source innovation. If open-source actors perceive journalism as a closed system, what do journalists think? That is, what evidence is there of a softening in attitude towards collaborative, networked approaches?

From a theoretical point of view, the actor–actant deconstruction of journalistic activities, as presented by Lewis and Westlund (2015), offers a fruitful approach as technology becomes increasingly intelligent and influential. Simultaneously, their model highlights the variation of actors in journalistic collaborations. Suggestions for future research include understanding how professional identities could be maintained and even enhanced in such collaborations. How do we create and facilitate successful collaborative projects with respect to the specific contributions of the members? Only then can we fully draw upon the potential of the new collaborative and open-source systems that are becoming a fundamental feature of journalistic investigations.

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.