OSINT or BULLSHINT? Exploring Open-Source Intelligence tweets about the Russo-Ukrainian War

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter discussions on the Russo-Ukrainian war to differentiate genuine OSINT from misinformation, revealing patterns, sentiment, partisanship, and strategic manipulation in social media discourse.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis combining sentiment, partisanship, misinformation detection, and community detection to understand OSINT dynamics in a geopolitical conflict.

Findings

Negative sentiment correlates with war events

Partisan distribution varies between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian

Community detection reveals distinct clusters of misinformation and partisanship

Abstract

This paper examines the role of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) on Twitter regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war, distinguishing between genuine OSINT and deceptive misinformation efforts, termed "BULLSHINT." Utilizing a dataset spanning from January 2022 to July 2023, we analyze nearly 2 million tweets from approximately 1,040 users involved in discussing real-time military engagements, strategic analyses, and misinformation related to the conflict. Using sentiment analysis, partisanship detection, misinformation identification, and Named Entity Recognition (NER), we uncover communicative patterns and dissemination strategies within the OSINT community. Significant findings reveal a predominant negative sentiment influenced by war events, a nuanced distribution of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian partisanship, and the potential strategic manipulation of information. Additionally, we apply community detection techniques, which are able to identify distinct clusters partisanship, topics, and misinformation, highlighting the complex dynamics of information spread on social media. This research contributes to the understanding of digital warfare and misinformation dynamics, offering insights into the operationalization of OSINT in geopolitical conflicts.