Official Public Intelligence Disclosures In the Information Age: A Study of the Interaction Between State Disseminated Intelligence And Third-Party Open-Source Intelligence Pertaining to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in 2022
2023 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
This thesis explores how Official Public Intelligence Disclosures interact with the growing prevalence and prominence of third-party open-source intelligence actors and their findings. In order to do this, it aims to answer the following research questions: “How have third-party open-source intelligence actors and their findings interacted with American and British official public intelligence disclosures leading up to, and during the first months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?”, and “What are the implications of increasingly influential third-party open-source intelligence actors for the state practice of official public intelligence disclosure?” The thesis covers the months leading up to, and the first months of the invasion and will utilise a discourse analysis to interpret the newspaper articles and third-party open-source intelligence publications that make up the empirical material. Additionally, two analytical frameworks are developed for use in the analysis. The first consists of the three criteria in Ofek Riemer’s theory on the performative act (2021: 556-558), and the second is based on four foreign policy objectives that the US and the UK sought to attain through their disclosures. The thesis discovered that open-source intelligence predominantly supported the US and the UK in attaining their foreign policy objectives by verifying and corroborating several of the claims they made, and by providing the ideas that they communicated with greater credibility. It also discovered that increasingly influential open-source intelligence actors could contribute to the viability of official public intelligence disclosures as a policy instrument that can be employed to attain external influence.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 53
Keywords [en]
Official Public Intelligence Disclosure (OPID), Intelligence disclosure, Open-source intelligence (OSINT), Performative actor, Third-party OSINT actor
National Category
Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalisation Studies)
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-11414OAI: oai:DiVA.org:fhs-11414DiVA, id: diva2:1732820
Subject / course
Political Science with a focus on Crisis Management and Security
Educational program
Master's programme in Politics, Security and War
Supervisors
Examiners
2023-02-082023-01-312025-09-29Bibliographically approved