Framing data witnessing: Airwars and the production of authority in conflict monitoring

Civilian victims of aerial warfare too often go uncounted and unrecognised by the belligerents. Myriad images and video of attacks against Syrian civilians did little to end their suffering, for example. The UK-based not-for-profit Airwars has had tangible impact on civilian harm disclosures and reparations because they have been able to shape such representations in a form that will be recognised by those with the power to enact change. Building on established theories of media witnessing and their extension to what Gray calls ‘data witnessing’, we argue that Airwars reveals the operative role of framing in open-source investigation and the forms of it witnessing it produces. Through interviews with key team members and detailed analysis of Airwars published methodology and other materials, this article shows how open-source investigations broadens the frame for witnessing civilian harm and in doing so generates relational, multi-scalar accounts of state violence that remain open to contestation and confirmation. In doing so, Airwars claims an epistemic authority via its distinctive framing of emergent practices of witnessing that depend upon the assembling of roles, standards, spatialities and techniques.