On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 19:22:52 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
This week’s “Listening Post” on Al Jazeera (viewable
here
<https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2019/09/xinjiang-story-china-world-forget-190907080927464.html>)
talks, in the latter part, about this new phenomenon of “open source”
journalism. My understanding is, the meaning of “source” here is not
that of “source code” familiar to software developers, but “source of
information” as understood by journalists.
A followup episode
<https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2020/01/science-art-open-source-journalism-200102224849578.html>
recaps the China story and also adds one about Syria along similar
lines, where researchers using publicly-available information were able
to penetrate the “fog of war”, and uncover at least some of the truth
that those providing the information were trying to hide.
An example detailed in the story is the April 2018 chemical-weapon
attack on Douma. Russian journalists very quickly went in to try to
claim that this was some kind of “false-flag” operation perpetrated by
the White Helmets themselves (the group of volunteers risking their
lives helping civilian victims of bombing attacks). However, the
researchers, using the footage provided by that same Russian
media, were able to show that the bomb casing was deformed in the way
you would expect from being dropped from an aircraft. And the only
aircraft operating anywhere near that area were from the Syrian
government or its ally Russia.
By the way, note the prominent use of Blender 3D software in their
analysis.