Bellingcat is constantly accused of making up information, but they can assert and say “No, we have done the research and here's the evidence.” Founder, Eliot Higgins says “They’ve accused us of being CIA, MI6 and now they’ve even ‘de-personed’ me. There are rumors in Russia that I don’t even exist, that my family don’t exist.” He discusses the “Counterfactual Community,” the networks people who can be relied upon to defend or deny evidence of atrocities whether through ideology or a deep disbelief in governments and mainstream media.
Higgins explains that “people are often drawn into conspiracies through a process of radicalization in counter information communities – leading to online radicalization and counter to authorities or anyone who opposes the information,” and invokes the dissimulation over WMD in Iraq as a catalyst for such mistrust. In contrast Higgins counters “open-source research is simple, it’s transparent and it’s about checking the evidence. We are always trying to be as transparent as possible on the sources that we use. We fact check everything that comes to us. When anyone comes to us with information there is a transparent process to validate it.”
