Civil Society Organisations
This page provides an overview of European civil society organizations conducting open-source investigations of disinformation. On this page you will find a map and a database of civil society organizations relevant to these activities and identified by the EDMO researchers at GLOBSEC.
This mapping is intended to provide a foundation for interdisciplinary and international collaborations between researchers studying disinformation. If you have comments, questions or think your institution/organisation should be a part of the overview, please contact [email].
What Is Open-Source Information And Open-Source Intelligence?
According to Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open-Source Investigations, open-source information is “information that any member of the public can observe, purchase or request, without requiring special legal status or unauthorized access”. Digital open-source information can be both user-generated and machine-generated data and includes content posted on social media, documents, images, videos, audio recordings on websites, satellite imagery, government-published data, commercial data including financial assessments and databases, etc. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is a practice of collecting and analysing information gathered from open sources to produce actionable intelligence aiding policymaking and decision-making.
Ethical Guidelines For Open-Source Research
In the ever-evolving landscape of civil society research and the open-source intelligence (OSINT) community, employing a diverse array of methodological approaches, there arises a compelling requirement for a pragmatic framework encompassing ethical principles and best practices to steer open-source research endeavours. Although many civil society organizations uphold values rooted in transparency, the majority lack a comprehensive ethical code or set of principles governing their research activities. This lacuna has been addressed by the ObSINT project, which has delineated ethical and research guidelines for open-source investigations.