Top 10 Takeaways from Our Journalism Seminar

Author: Lindsay Whyte

300 people chose to spend their Friday evening talking OSINT with us… what did we find out?

At our recent event, Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, and Manisha Ganguly, Investigations Lead at The Guardian, met with an audience of 300 people to discuss the state of OSINT and journalism. OSINT UK members and journalism students attended this UK OSINT Community Seminar, hosted in conjunction with City University of London’s Journalism School and Dr. Richard Danbury. We saw an encouraging 58:42 gender balance, with guests joining from law enforcement, media, industry, and even flying in from abroad to hear what was said.

Both Manisha and Eliot presented their thoughts on ‘OSINT, journalism, and the modern audience’. Dr. Richard Danbury, course director for the MA in Investigative Journalism, moderated a panel discussion in which the audience was invited to participate and share their views and questions.

In keeping with our mantra to be OSINT’s biggest champion and harshest critic, here are our top 10 takeaways from the seminar:

1. OSINT is Here to Stay

Governments and universities are now reckoning with this previously rejected form of intelligence. It can no longer be treated as a low-grade form of intelligence simply due to its accessibility for all. The surge in tools and techniques over the past decade proves this beyond doubt.

2. Technology Can Distract from Good Tradecraft

The explosion in accessible OSINT tools on the market today can distract from the importance of maintaining an investigative mindset. Do you know if nation-state actors or proxies are operating these tools (i.e. too good to be true)? This can even lead OSINT in a vacuum to become overly defensive, obsessing over ‘fact-checking’ and little else. OSINT must be combined with investigative journalism fundamentals.

3. OSINT Risks Being Prohibitive and Exclusionary

OSINT risks becoming increasingly corporate and prohibitive to investigators, which goes against the spirit of open source. Students and journalists looking to enhance their investigative arsenal are finding themselves excluded. OSINT is only a slice of the truth because the government will always own the rest of the intelligence.

4. OSINT Must Guard Against Unconscious Bias

OSINT practitioners must be vigilant against unconscious bias, especially considering the concentration of investigators in the (crudely defined) ‘Global North,’ often focusing attention on the ‘Global South’. OSINT must be culturally sensitive, given this imbalance, which shows no sign of changing soon.

5. Beware of Malinformation (Different from Misinformation/Disinformation)

Twitter/X’s paid verification is inadvertently elevating poor tradecraft and journalists who contribute to misinformation, rather than challenging it. Information chaos and polarisation are being masked by investigative journalism. ‘Malinformation’—information based on reality but deliberately manipulated or put into context to cause harm—is a new breed of sensationalist misinformation deserving of caution.

6. Voices Shouting the Loudest Win

The pundit industrial complex—big personalities and characters newsjacking topical events—beats pure news sources hands down in attracting the modern audience. Twitter/X was dying long before recent takeovers because people want opinions from personalities they trust, rightly or wrongly, as their source of news.

7. True Believers Are the Missing Link in Information Warfare

The pyramid of radicalisation often begins with seeds of distrust, followed by a huge personal crisis, and is topped off by seemingly deep internet research (see below):

8. Small, Tight Minorities Overpower the Majority in the Information Space

Content sharing within a tight community, often alt-media, is the strongest and most resilient form of information sharing online.

9. Young People Aren’t Passive Consumers of Information

They participate without realising it (liking, retweeting, promoting by engagement). Since people don’t suddenly turn 18 and start reading newspapers, the algorithms which prioritise rage over fact require education. As a community, we must be more proactive in teaching young people media literacy and guiding the media landscape in jurisdictions facing a significant lag in media freedom.

10. Risks with Decentralisation

Internet censorship could push people into harder-to-reach corners of the web, where moderating and monitoring are more difficult and less mature.

Overall, thanks to an enthusiastic Q&A section and honest insights from Eliot and Manisha, the seminar was a success and a great start to the UK OSINT Seminar series.

See you at the next one! Join here for notifications > osint.uk/join