Bellingcat – “When news breaks and the internet is aflutter with activity and speculation, many turn to open source accounts and experts to make sense of events. This is truly a sign that open source research — using resources like satellite images to flight tracking websites and footage recorded on the ground — is seen as credible and is increasingly sought after. It’s free, publicly available and anybody can do it. But such success comes with drawbacks. In monitoring events from Iran and Ukraine, this surge in credibility allows the term ‘OSINT’ to be easily abused, either knowingly or unknowingly, by users who don’t actually follow the best practice of open source research methods. In fact, since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, there has been a spike in verified ‘OSINT’ Twitter accounts which create additional noise and confusion with poor open source analysis. Conducting open source research properly isn’t about being ‘verified’ or having a huge following. It isn’t about expecting people to take your word for things. It’s about collaboration and sharing the skills necessary to independently verify what you see online. It’s about showing your working and the origin of your data so that anybody can replicate your methodology. As Bellingcat’s Giancarlo Fiorella indicated in the Financial Times in December, open source research is critical in the long term when it could come to play a role in prosecuting those responsible for atrocity crimes. That raises the bar significantly — not just for the sake of the open source research community as a whole, but also for that of accountability for the victims of armed conflicts. Here are a few mistakes we’ve noticed from open source researchers in recent years. Many examples are relevant to monitoring armed conflict, but could broadly apply to any genre on which open source research shines — such as natural disasters or organised crime. We work in a young and rapidly evolving field, facing a deluge of information. Mistakes should be no cause for surprise or shame. Everybody makes them. But a good open source researcher is open about doing so – they correct their errors quickly and vow to do better next time.

If you’re a reader, looking out for these ‘Seven Sins’ (listed in no particular order of gravity) will help you independently judge the quality of open source research you encounter online. If you’re also an open source researcher, looking out for them will help improve the quality of your own work…”