Open-source intelligence as a social craft – a definition and research agenda

To understand how open-source intelligence (OSINT) and its producers gain and maintain credibility amidst a booming field of investigations on war and human rights violations, the project VALOSINT proposes to move beyond dominant functionalist definitions of OSINT. Instead, it directs analytical attention toward the social practices through which open data is turned into valuable intelligence and through which professionals from different domains become legitimate open-source investigators. To this end, the working paper proposes to conceptualize OSINT as a distinct craft – a socially embedded, skilled practice that simultaneously constitutes a profession, a methodical science and a form of techno- political intervention. By attending to these three sociological dimensions of craftsmanship, VALOSINT offers a conceptual lens to study how, in an age of de-monopolized intelligence production in war and human rights contexts, accounts of truth are validated and contested. This conceptual lens is informed by social practice theory, which sheds light on the competences, meanings and material arrangements that sustain and legitimize OSINT work.