OSINV vs. Core International Crimes: Practices and Professional Identities of Ukrainian Journalists, Investigators, and Researchers Investigating Atrocities

In this article, we examine how the practices, technologies, and collaborations of Ukrainian journalists, investigators, and researchers investigating war crimes during the Russo-Ukrainian war—particularly the use of OSINV and their engagement with international legal discourse—shape their professional identities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Ukraine, including semi-structured interviews with 18 professionals investigating war crimes, we ask: How do journalists, investigators, and researchers use OSINV practices and technologies to investigate core international crimes? How do they (re)negotiate their relationships with legal and criminal discourses and institutions? How do journalists, investigators, and researchers investigating core international crimes integrate OSINV practices into their professional identities? Through illustrating how their professional identities absorb OSINV-related practices in the context of armed conflicts, we argue that OSINV-driven atrocity crime investigations lie at multiple intersections of diverse logics, roles, and ways of positioning, particularly the public service logic and the commercial, gamified logic of journalism, the watchdog and the facilitator roles, local and global justice processes, and across the discursive institutions of journalism, law, and human rights. The findings testify to the increasing hybridization of journalism and human rights advocacy, and blur the boundary between storytelling and processes that lead to legal justice.