COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 07/06/2019
Michael Edison Hayden
Open source intelligence, which researchers and security services style OSINT, is one of the most valuable tools to a contemporary reporter, because of the vast amount of publicly available online information.
Reporters conducting OSINT-based research should aspire to use the information they gather online to peer behind the superficial mask of the internet—the anonymous avatars on Twitter, for example, or the filtered photographs on Instagram—and tell the story of the real, flesh-and-blood human beings on the other side of our screens.