Open Data/Opaque Analysis: Examining OSINT Use in Conflict Settings (CGA)

Center for Geographic Analysis Geography Club Presentation by Evangeline McGlynn

Abstract

While Opensource Intelligence (OSINT) as a concept has been in use since the Second World War, wide availability and increasing savvy of the public on geospatial software, particularly Google Earth, has increased public participation in the analysis and verification of publicly available imagery. In this paper I will discuss the proliferation of OSINT practitioners and how their work operates in conflict settings. Conducted by people with a wide range of levels of expertise in geospatial analysis and similarly wide levels of personal experience in the actual landscape they analyze, OSINT practitioners intervening in wartime are themselves participants in claimsmaking exercises occurring alongside violent re-territorialization.

The primary case study will be the wake of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, wherein the regularization of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is still in progress. Beyond the geopolitical discussions happening between high level officials on the particulars of the border, this process has been a subject of endless speculation on social media. With easier access to geospatial technology, more and more vernacular discussion on the war and the subsequent border process has involved aerial imagery, viewshed analysis, and other spatial analytical tasks previously out of reach to the public. In this space, lay and professional mappers are active participants, often verifying or countering messaging from national authorities. Putting emphasis on the social implications of technological changes in spatial representation, I will advocate for the analytical shift necessary to make sense of "democratization" of geospatial tools in a time of violent conflict.

Speaker bio

Evangeline McGlynn is a Disaster Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Trained as a geographer, McGlynn’s work spans political ecology and critical digital geography, with particular emphasis on disaster and war. At Harvard, McGlynn primarily investigates historical earthquakes, their long-term remnants, and the social aspects of their spatial representation.