Attribution and Information Influence Operations: A Field Guide for Open-Source Investigators and Researchers

Most attribution guidance in the FIMI field is written for analysts working within institutional frameworks that provide access to proprietary platform data, law enforcement tools, or classified intelligence. This field guide, produced by Cardiff University’s Crime and Intelligence Innovation Institute, fills a genuine gap: it is explicitly designed for researchers and investigators whose work depends on open-source methods and who must navigate attribution without privileged data access. The report sets out a set of core principles intended to govern OSINT-based attribution — covering both methodological integrity and the ethical responsibilities that attach to publishing attribution findings.

The guide is intended to be read alongside the companion Lund University attribution framework, and the two documents work well together: the Lund piece provides the analytical architecture; this one addresses the investigator’s on-the-ground decisions about evidence collection, source handling, and the limits of what open-source data can support. For civil society researchers, journalists, and academic teams doing attribution work without institutional backing, this is one of the more practically grounded methodological resources currently available in the field.