For my reporting in Berlin, I plan to focus on the question of integration for Afghan refugees in Germany. The public conversation about the migration of certain populations often centers on deportation and political debates, but what happens after arrival is also important. I am hoping to explore this in more detail in Berlin in whatever capacity I can. For the Afghan population that seeks to stay in Germany, integration is often a long, layered process that unfolds in distinct phases. This often means the process is layered and complex, allowing for a wide range of experiences. 

Through conversations I’ve already begun, it’s clear that refugees undergo integration as a sequence of steps. First would be learning the language, then the refugees would need to find stable housing, and finally they would need to secure work and start paying taxes. These milestones are oftentimes markers that help demonstrate belonging, but they also come with their unique challenges. Through my reporting I would like to document how individuals move through this process, where they encounter barriers, and what success looks like in their daily lives.

Focusing on integration might also provide space for me to highlight the role discrimination, uncertainty, community, and religion play in this process. Even when Afghans master the language or enter the workforce, they do sometimes face exclusion and discrimination. Yet, many Afghans continue to want to stay in Germany.

By speaking to sources, I would hope to continue to shape the scope of my article. While talking to Wahid, I learned a great deal about the unique integration process Germany has and how this process impacts Afghan refugees in the country. I hope to continue to get in contact with sources that speak to what this process looks like in other countries, and potentially how it varies. Wahid also provided me with the contact information of an Afghan man currently living in Berlin, as well as the stories of others who are currently facing deportation as they try to integrate themselves in Germany. Looking forward, I would hope to get in contact with Afghan students in Germany who face a unique set of circumstances, as well as older Afghans already in the workforce. I also think looking at more recent immigrants as opposed to long-settled Afghans may be interesting when discussing what successful integration is. 

By centering my reporting on integration, I would hope to convey both the personal and the political dimensions of Afghan life in Germany. The goal would ultimately be to move beyond abstract discussions of the migration of a specific group and show how Afghans themselves understand and pursue integration.

Other potential reporting topics could include looking at religion and community among the Afghan population by examining how religion shapes the overall process. Mosques and Churches for example often provide resources that the state does not. Religion is also widely regarded as a source of strength for many people throughout the world, and very little reporting has been done on how these refugees interact with religion as they integrate into a new society. This is especially interesting to me given how much more secular Germany has become. 

Additionally, more topics that I have been intrigued by that somewhat relate to the topics discussed in this post are the unique experiences Afghan women face during integration as well as what Afghan political activism looks like in the country around issues like immigration.

Questions for the AfD Representative:

1. What core values do you believe set the AfD apart from other German parties? Why are these values important?
2. How does the AfD define successful integration for refugees?
3. How do you see the AfD engaging with younger generations of voters and activists?

What I found most interesting in this week’s prep materials was the revolutionary nature of open source investigations due to their widespread accessibility. Anyone can become an “accidental journalist,” as described in the Bellingcat documentary, if they happen to digitally capture instances of interest. Further, interested volunteers can use those sources as the basis of their investigation – an investigation that can be conducted in that volunteer’s home anywhere in the world. In venturing away from the typical newsroom, open source journalism not only permits an ease of entry that has been historically absent but also allows volunteers from all around the world to collaborate on stories. However, this accessibility also holds innate challenges that are not as abundant in traditional modes of journalism. Accurate evidence, in this context, becomes more necessary as independent, volunteer journalists do not have the credibility of a known, verified outlet behind them. Additionally, as the documentary makes abundantly clear, footage is easy to forge and propagate as factual. Truth and evidence, therefore, become even more crucial commodities. 

Open source journalism not only serves as a typical fourth estate ‘watchdog’ entity but also as a mechanism for human rights accountability. This dual usage is evident through Human Rights Watch’s use of the method for their cases. Serving essentially as discovery would for a legal case, this type of investigative reporting can be used to source evidence of human rights violations from foreign actors in a way that was never possible prior to widespread and instantaneous access to footage of practically anything at any time. A Bellingcat reporter emphasizes this point, commenting that there are more hours of the Syrian Civil War online than hours in the conflict itself. The Defense Blog describes this accountability utility as “reveal[ing] the fog of war.” However, the documentary also makes clear that, while the overwhelming documentation of any event anywhere in the world is lauded as an “information revolution,” it can easily descend into “information warfare.” The film stresses that humans don’t want to fact-check any information that contradicts their worldview. Therefore, with an abundance of truthful and false/misleading information so quickly accessible, it becomes easier to live in an echo chamber – trusting sources that confirm existing beliefs or biases without bothering to verify any of this information. In reading these sources and witnessing the power of open-source investigative journalism, I was in awe of the talent and dedication of these citizen journalists. However, when watching the documentary, I was struck by how this tool for accountability, brought about by the accessible and ubiquitous nature of the internet, can also be so quickly used for sowing distrust in truth and creating misleading content for clicks. How do we, as an audience and as aspiring journalists, reckon with the dual power of the internet? Further, how do we ensure that we continue to find truth within an online landscape increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and other technological advances?

The readings for this week on Open Source Intelligence were motivating. On the one hand, journalism is in peril as sensationalism favors accuracy online, and disinformation is rampant. On the other hand, new technologies like artificial intelligence, digital mapping, spatial reconstruction, and geolocation allow people to pursue rigorous investigations behind their computer screens. In many ways, journalists have more tools than ever to bypass the restrictions of security states. 

The Human Rights Watch articles we read are excellent examples of open-source journalism. I was fascinated by the way satellite imagery combined with survivor narratives to prove that bombings took place. Open Source Intelligence is also used to counter Russia’s denials of the bombings. In this example, journalists who follow stories with online tools return credibility to survivors, taking it away from a powerful state. In another example, Human Rights Watch reconstructed the story of a bombing at a train station in Ukraine. They used video and photographic evidence to estimate the amount of people in the crowd, and screenshots of telegram announcements to provide context. I was most impressed by the way the investigators collected medical evidence from survivors–X-rays, fragments of metal, and descriptions of injuries–and matched it with the remnants of submunitions. This kind of project is inspiring. Communication with people on the ground, along with social media posts, satellite imagery, and background research into Russia’s weapons combined to produce a comprehensive account of a bombing that can be archived.  

I was blown away by the “spatial reconstruction” technique mentioned in “The Listening Post” episode. The only evidence journalists had to investigate a torture prison in Syria were memories of survivors. They used the sensory details victims remembered to identify architectural elements of the space, eventually reconstructing it using digital tools. This example made clear how important collaboration will be as the field of journalism changes. In the case of spatial reconstruction, reporters, architects, and software developers collaborated to expose war crimes. On that note, exposing war crimes seems to be the greatest use of Open Source journalism, which relies on reporting tools that do not endanger sources. 

Open Source signals a shift not only in the tools of journalism, but also in the structures of power that govern its dissemination. Traditionally, the stamp of legacy media – NYT, BBC, etc. – gave a piece of writing credibility. Now, that is undermined on the one hand by politicians who spread disinformation, and on the other hand, by changing reader habits. Further, anyone, today, can be a journalist. It is harder to verify the truth of the media than ever before. 

Open Source – and specifically, citizen journalism – responds by proving credibility through transparency, not institutional backing. Citizens and Open Source journalists who operate independently must lay bare the evidence backing up their claims. The documentary on Bellingcat develops this idea, paving a way for a new model for building public trust in the media. Ironically, this ideology, in some ways, aligns with the anti-establishment view of many populist politicians. But while a source like Bellingcat may favor transparency over institutional backing, its work is ultimately guided by the pursuit of truth, not profit or political gain. 

The word “painstaking” stuck out to me from the Bellingcat article we read this week for how well it fit the work performed by open source journalists. The problem they face is not necessarily a lack of data, but an abundance of data in raw and scattered forms that must all be gathered and cross-referenced to piece together a coherent narrative. The details involved in this process can be as small as the size of the floor tiles in a Syrian prison or as large as an area of desert and farmland that can be seen from space. Refining these data requires a very particular type of patience, diligence, and even obsession that I’m not sure many people possess. Most importantly, though, it takes time – HRW’s piece on the Ukrainian train station strike was released no less than 10 months after the strike happened. This time allowed HRW to put together a seemingly bulletproof account of the strike, not only describing what happened but also directly making the case that what happened was a war crime—and doing so in a forceful piece of writing. Here, as with any other piece of long-term reporting, time augments the force of the argument but also leads one to imagine what the reporters could have done with that time instead. Not everything can be analyzed with such scrutiny as the bombing of the train station, which leads me to wonder how HRW decided on this case over others. What about this case made them feel it was worth studying? Was it the severity of the crime? The availability of information? If not all war crimes can be fully examined and entered into evidence for legal cases, why do some get studied and others don’t?

Many of the pieces on open source reporting were bullish on the method. In particular, they enthused about the way that “citizen journalists and lone investigators” were leading the charge in developing open source reporting, because the tools required to do this reporting are accessible to anyone, anywhere—and because governments and mainstream outlets were slow to pick up the techniques that lay users were developing at “light speed” (Bellingcat). Yet there is definitely a darker side to this dynamic that other pieces this week mentioned: citizen journalists are doing the work because no one else is able to. Bellingcat, one of the principal open source journalism outlets, relies on volunteer labor, with reporters squeezing hours of research into a day already occupied by a full-time job and even childrearing in some cases. It didn’t seem to be able to pay these diligent journalists for their time. Meanwhile, commentators in the documentary and other sources lamented in the inability for mainstream outlets to fund this kind of work, as they face shrinking budgets and dwindling subscriber bases. Therefore, although this is a story of intrepid and plucky researchers, it’s also a story of a media landscape that only allows this research to be done by those individuals. Open source reporting in this model relies on agility and precarity at the same time. How long until unpaid volunteers lose interest or capacity, and stop working for Bellingcat? Is the solution to find more people to take their place?

For my reporting in Berlin, I plan to continue my investigation into the rise of the AfD party. 

Thus far, I have been able to interview a number of sources who have discussed the background narrative around the far-right rise across Europe and its relation to issues involving migration. I spoke with one former State Department employee who has been a really great source, and is able to deeply discuss how immigration across Europe has turned citizens towards far-right movements. He talked about Russia’s involvement in the regional wars that cause instability in countries, leading to mass migration and weakening the democracies in surrounding countries. This particular narrative seems extremely relevant, and a topic I hope to make an integral part of my background story. 

Another source that I have spoken to here in the German department has been very helpful in explaining some of the causes of this shift right in Germany. This professor has discussed how the effects of the east/west Germany split and reconnection after the wall fell has left lingering effects. He talked about the idea of guilt and shame, and how eastern Germans feel that their views went unheard for so long, and now the AfD party is listening. 

My goal in Germany is to find a person who embodies this narrative. I hope to find someone who has moved towards support of the AfD party in the last decade and hear their story. I feel I have enough sources to feel confident about having a complete background narrative by the end of this semester, and finding this source who is actually an AfD supporter will be my bigger challenge. Alternatively, I could also see a story that features a German resident who strongly opposes the AfD party, and sees others close to them move further to the right. In this case, it would be a little more secondary, but I can also see this angle as a way to incorporate more stories about the immigrants coming to Germany and the support this person wants to bring to them. 

In order to find some of these sources, I am beginning to reach out to connections my current sources have given me. I know that I will be able to speak to the daughter of one of my sources who is currently studying at the University of Berlin. Also, the German professor said he would be able to send my information to some of his friends living in Berlin, so I am hopeful to get a few more interviews that way. Another option that I am considering is to reach out to school groups at, for instance, the University of Berlin that are in support of the AfD party. As a fellow student, I might be more likely to be able to interview them. Finally, I can see myself meeting everyday residents in Berlin and asking questions that way to understand the perspective on the streets. 

Questions for the AfD representative:

• Why do you believe so many Germans are resonating with the values of the AfD?
• Why are immigration policies at the center of your party’s platform?
• What would you tell a prospective refugee to whom you have just denied entry into your country?

I acquainted myself with many of the OSINT techniques mentioned in this week’s readings in my investigative journalism class last semester. I combed through lobbying databases, social media accounts, and donation records of wealthy businessmen to identify potential conflicts of interest with members of the Trump cabinet. While I’d known that the internet could make visible to journalists so much of what we see as personal or private — revealing hidden financial, political, and social ties between individuals that appear completely unrelated — it was striking to see how OSINT could go much further than that: identifying war crimes committed and concealed by entire governments, solely with evidence from the internet, accomplished thousands of miles away in the comfort of one’s home.

The HRW piece on Russian war crimes against Syrian civilians was striking in the diversity of sources that were used. From scrolling through the archives of the ‘flight spotter’ channels to analyzing the Russian Ministry of Defense’s social media posts to identify military officials who were rewarded for their service, no single source stood alone to support the authors’ claims — each new piece of evidence substantiated the other. I felt similarly about the sources of the Kramatorsk train station piece, which used a combination of civilian anecdotes, standards of international law, and Telegram messages/social media accounts to establish evidence of Russian war crimes. The Bellingcat documentary was a favorite: I was especially impressed by how they correlated the MH17 flight crash with Russian involvement through dashcam footage of the Buk convoy carrying the Russian missile that downed the plane, using fuel prices and shadows from the truck to correlate the footage to a date and time.

I was also intrigued by the Russian response to Bellingcat’s findings. Russia framed the Bellingcat investigators as secluded and uncredentialed, who knew far too little about journalism or the military to make any substantial claim against them. Yet the documentary showed how even media organizations we deem as reliable could fall short in their fact-checking efforts: take, for instance, the auto bomb incident in Baghdad that was reported on by both Reuters and the NYTimes, which was revealed to be staged even after Reuters journalists were there to report and speak to locals in person afterwards. I was also reminded of a conversation I had with my Syrian friend, who told me that for most of her life, the most reliable source of news had been Facebook, due to both the lack of trustworthy mainstream media outlets and the widespread availability of social media platforms that weren’t directly controlled by the Assad regime. It brought to my attention the question of whether our standards of journalistic credibility will change — or need to change — dramatically in the next decade. I’m concerned by both the rise of mis/disinformation through AI and the limitations of mainstream media falling short under political pressure, an issue that, perhaps, independent journalists and nonprofit journalistic organizations are better equipped to handle.  

Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) seems to have reshaped the way journalists and citizens alike uncover the truth. The examples throughout the readings from Syria and Ukraine illustrate just how powerful this tool can be, as it offers a glimpse into what the future might look like if more people utilized OSINT. The findings highlighted in the articles and videos this week have been startling. By utilizing seemingly insignificant fragments of already public information, journalists are exposing atrocities on a massive scale. The airstrikes in Idlib outlined in the Human Rights Watch article is just one compelling example.

Overall, this strategy has the potential to increase transparency, empower the general public, and even help shape global discourse. Perhaps the tool’s most important impact lies in its ability to help shape public narratives. Open-source investigations in many respects do not just seek to uncover the truth; they seek to control the story that is being told. In many of these countries, the citizens who post articles, images, and videos don’t have the audience or authority to speak about what is happening on the ground. That is where open-source investigations become so important, because they are able to amplify the voices of those who are often ignored or forgotten.

​Although open-source investigations seem to do a tremendous amount of good, I am still skeptical as to how much accountability these investigations are able to get. For example, although the readings this week show that journalists are doing groundbreaking work, justice is still not being achieved. In the video published by Al Jazeera, it is clear that proof is being acquired to help show the world what is actually happening on the ground. In the case of the Uyghur population in China, the investigations have proven that prison-like re-education camps exist, but these investigations have done very little to help fix the actual problem on the ground. Placing all the responsibility on these open-source investigations and investigators isn’t fair, but I think it is important to acknowledge the impact these investigations have on the ground. Syria perfectly demonstrates this tension. Although Syria has had one of the most documented wars in recent memory, prosecution and accountability has still lagged behind. Furthermore, the risks involved are substantial for everyone. As journalist James Palmer noted in the video, some of his sources have simply disappeared.

​Finally, I think it is important to mention that one of OSINT’s biggest advantages is that there are countless independent non-state open-source intelligence organizations that actively work to uncover the truth. Yet, unfortunately, as the State Magazine article shows, organizations or programs that get funding from the government and the Department of State, for example, are extremely vulnerable to political whim and pressure. By canceling the work done by the Yale Lab, the Trump administration essentially helped highlight how vulnerable this work is, despite how crucial the work is all over the world. As technology develops, the potential influence OSINT can have is important to remember. In an age where public trust in media and journalists is at an all time low, this form of investigation has the potential to reshape public trust altogether.

For me, reading about the use of OSINT to document atrocities, identify targets, and foster liberation is really exciting for a budding engineer like myself and is a welcome instance of technology being used for good. Ukraine can see Russian barracks and neutralize them through this interactive map. Russia is incontrovertibly refuted on multiple counts. But technology, surveillance, and intelligence have always been a part of warfare. Now, it’s the democratization of information, thanks to the internet and the rise of white intelligence, publicly available resources that allow for truth to arise. 

This is my first introduction to forensic architecture, and it’s truly shocking how much can be constructed from what seems like so few resources. The audio modeling, where they simulate echoes and relate it to the physics of sound interaction with matter (i.e, walls) to model the building, was very astounding.  

In the case of the Douma yellow canister, what is revealed is how white intelligence can be used to not just show what is now, but say something about what happened in the past and how it happened. Specifically, they were able to show that the canister fell from the sky and the debris supports that trajectory.    

Studying the methodology of open source research, especially through HRW’s Syria article, opened my eyes to the necessity of this constructive process and helped me understand what is really meant by “fog of war.” It’s not that information doesn’t exist. The gap that open source fills is to take data and corroborate them with one another to reconstruct an event and reveal something tangible and definite. 

In the context of Russia’s kidnapping of Ukrainians, the general question of motive in this entire war comes to the fore. We have a sense that Russia’s motive for starting the whole war is expansive and imperialist, and trying to reclaim some Soviet Era dream. We also know that they’re afraid of NATO expansion to Eastern Europe and their potentially being encircled. 

Zooming in particularly to the motive for kidnapping children, it’s hard to see how indoctrinating kids advances those objectives. Yes, indoctrination can be used to make a population more manageable and less resistant. But the logic is you take over a place, then indoctrinate the people so that you can preserve control. To abduct people into your land and then indoctrinate them makes no sense. 

Population boost is another touted reason. But that’s negligible. You can’t implement a population overhaul through kidnapping. So it makes sense that they’re trying to bring occupied territories to the Russian fold. But still, it seems like the route they’re going is too costly.

“We like to think people have a rational relationship with information. We do not. We have an emotional relationship with information.” To me this quote from Bellingcat says it all, or at least, says a lot. The readings this week made me reflect on the irrational way in which we receive information, and whether journalism is up to the task of helping us make sense of the world rationally. It seems to me that Open Source journalism can serve the public in some ways traditional journalism currently does not. I really appreciated the point in Bellingcat about trust works differently for citizen journalism versus professional journalism. In citizen journalism, trust is generated through transparency and providing all of the evidence to support a claim, while traditional journalism often expects to garner the reader’s trust through its standards, authority, popularity, or name (e.g. trusting CNN because it’s CNN, not because it provides a complete evidence trail as to how it obtains its information). 

When Dean of the Columbia Journalism School Jelani Cobb was on campus last semester, he was asked what piece he would choose to write right now, if he could write on any topic, and he said he’d write a long think-piece about public trust. I wonder if and how open source journalism would factor into that think-piece, and whether more people engaging with information gathering by participating in it could increase trust in reporting — whether allowing for mass participation in the act of journalism would give it greater authority than having it concentrated in the hands of a few, in a newsroom.  

I was also struck by just how many types of injustice Open Source journalism can help uncover. With just youtube, twitter, and google maps, one could trace an accidental Russian bombing, or re-education campus for Muslims in China, or who committed hate crimes in Charlottesville, or the deportations of thousands of Ukrainian children — not in the past, but in real time. That’s a pretty powerful tool, and clearly it’s really changing the game. Still, it was very cool and surprising to read about the history of Open Source and trace it back to the late 19th century in Colquhon’s piece. Maybe now, it is changing the game less in terms of what we can discover as journalists, and more in terms of how quickly we can discover it and distribute that information. It was also really cool to learn about the history of Open Source and trace it back to. Still, I’m curious about to what extent AI will cast doubts on its efficacy, which Bellingcat did not fully address: as the internet begins to host more fake videos, and those fake videos get better and better, how can we keep trusting that putting these videos together can give us accurate information?

Lastly, the FT piece on tech lords and populists was an interesting look into how people derive power in our modern society. I hadn’t before considered how there have always been powerful digital moguls, and there have always been powerful populist politicians, but now the two are coming together and reinforcing each other’s power. But given this power, it seems OSINT might also gain more significance in holding it accountable, especially as the Trump administration and similarly authoritarian regimes globally are shedding their own layers of accountability. 

Starting at the beginning of open source intelligence in history, I can understand why its resurgence in the digital age is so popular. Before the advent of the internet, open sourcing was more closely tied with the “librarian” image, but today it has become an integral aspect of information gathering for stories of high levels of risk. Watching the methods used by Bellingcat, it is clear that OSINT has a real place in the ecosystem of news today, and I imagine will only continue to gain popularity as deepfake videos and other AI created content begins circulating. 

The most central value for Bellingcat and other similar organizations is the meticulousness with which they find their information and the degree of transparency they are able to present. One problem in society today is the distrust towards mainstream media. Citing sources, linking videos, re-creating scenes using mapping software are all methods that yield high legitimacy perceptions for viewers. Although this documentation of history is not appreciated as widely today as it deserves, I can only hope that in the future the atrocities covered are given justice in the history books, and it is projects like these that make that possible. 

A few things that stood out to me in the readings for this week was the data available for those willing to seek it. Hearing about the documents posted on Chinese websites citing laws that allowed the government to create re-education camps was truly shocking. In other oppressive regimes like Russia, their strategy has been to declare reports of [insert unjust claim] a complete fabrication by western media sources. I was actually surprised that China was attempting to rectify their actions through citing laws that would allow them to carry out this action, and that this information was publicly available. This served as an example for me to see how oppressive regimes can be called out by citizens with enough persistence. 

Another interesting aspect of OSINT from the sources was the reach of this method into “black box” areas. The report by the listening post about the Sanaya prison that was recreated through interviews without a single photograph or video for reference is investigative journalism at its finest. This group was reporting about something entirely unknown, with every effort made to maintain privacy. 

Though the OSINT methods alone are impressive, I think they are most effective when combined with more standard journalistic practices. Rebuilding an event or scene is only emotionally capturing when it is coupled with interviews, pictures, or video. It is the personal narrative that was so strong in the Human Rights Watch piece that gives meaning to their open source intelligence gathering, 

Lastly, it is hard to read about the Trump administration’s decisions to cut funding to projects like the Yale Humanitarian Lab and feel confident in the direction our country is headed. The Financial Times’ story about tech giants and governments’ relationship further illustrates dangers facing the US and Europe as democratic values are eroded.