In the war in Ukraine we are seeing very explicit images. Corpses scattered on the ground in Bucha. bloodied children. Evacuated pregnant women in Mariupol. Explosions during broadcasts. Journalists who get excited live. Exodus on Instagram.
The images reach us almost without filters and in real time.
Excess of explicit violence and spectacularization?
Since the war began, we have experienced an unusual visual intensity and surprising mix of content. The images oscillate between explicit violence and endearing or spectacular pictures in the news, newspapers or social networks.
The journalist and graphic editor has already spoken about the problem of spectacularization and the drift towards entertainment, at the risk of leaving aside in-depth journalism in the media Pepe Baeza.
However, the issue reaches new dimensions as it is promoted even by the president himself Volodomyr Zelensky, who has even asked the tiktokers and Russian bloggers to collaborate to stop the war. The videos of influencers they even sneak into the news, personalizing the suffering of war.
We just published an investigation on photojournalism and Covid-19 made with a Grifols Foundation bioethics scholarship. It analyzes the consequences of the great imbalance between the few images that showed the seriousness of the sick, deceased and affected compared to the many that focused on the anecdote of everyday life in the story and memory of the pandemic / syndemic.
Without having finished this stage yet -and after having spoken in it of photodemic– now surprising the avalanche of explicit images of suffering, cruelty and horror along with others that show the day to day and that include moments of frivolity and evasion.
The conflict in Ukraine is presented as the first war with a truly global impact after the arrival of covid-19. Following a dearth of photos of the harshest aspect of the pandemic, a plethora of war images are now being seen on Instagram with the message “Sensitive content: This photo may contain graphic or violent content.” It is inevitable to compare this profusion of death and violence with the hypersensitivity generated by the images published during the health crisis, a context in which the seriously ill and the deceased have been minimized (and even eliminated) from the visual narrative under the pretext of protect their identity and dignity.
In a recent publication by the photojournalist Aris Messini From kyiv, a van full of bodies covered with plastic and cloth is shown. However, the “sensitive content” filter has been placed on a detail photo of a corpse’s hand. It is hard to know where the limits of what can be shown explicitly in times of war are established.
On the other hand, subjective and personal images seem to have an increasing presence. TikTok and Instagram take center stage as monitoring channels to “live” the facts which are echoed even in the news. In this way, the daily life during the war is more present than ever in the story. The immediacy and subjectivity of the testimonies has relegated the information generated by professionals to the background.
everyday life
War is a trend, mobile phones are filled with violence in real time and there are numerous voices that speak of the first war on TikTok.
The Arab spring and the war in Syria had already used social networks and this “domestic” content (DIY, “do it yourself”), but not with the level of sophistication and immediacy that the evolution of the smartphones in recent years. As Kyle Chayka asks in The New YorkerAre we facing a new form of citizen war journalism or simply an invitation to continue clicking?
In all long wars, people have eaten, slept, played, and even fallen in love. But never before have we seen it all at once, live, anywhere, anytime, with such intensity. social networks and smartphones They give us access to it.
For example, Alex Hook he’s a soldier-influencer on TikTok, armed, that dances to the rhythm of grunge music either make the moon walk by Michael Jackson while he is at the front so that his daughter, who is following him, knows that he is okay.
Bill loveyoustepan on Instagram shares the escape from the country of Stepan, a Ukrainian cat who on March 16 he managed to reach France.
Numerous short videos, with catchy music and decontextualized images, put the war scene in the foreground along with the faces of influencers. Many of them are Ukrainians who are still in the country or who are from there but live abroad, like Martha Vasyuta, @whereislizzyy either @valerisssh. The latter shows a videofor example, how a Ukrainian refugee lives in Italy: dealing with topics such as makeup, the hotel, Italian food and a television program.
@whereislizzyymeanwhile share TikTok videos with choreography included to explain that he was woken up at 5 in the morning by a Russian bombardment either who has to flee because of the war. Frivolous elements are presented here, typical of the universe influencerwhich are disruptive in the context of war.
Frequently, this new form of communication of pain and war has behind it the objective of saying “I am here”. This is worrying if it is combined with the desire for notoriety, immediacy and “likes”, with an audience that can access information massively and without filters.
The humanization of the story
Also the teenager Diana Totok share your departure from the country –including how he packs, his tears or the emotional farewell to his father– with musical background. These videos connect with the public showing the same cultural heritage and a closeness in musical or visual references.
Surely, one of the clearest examples of this facet is that of Amalia, a girl in a shelter in the Ukraine, singing the famous song “Let It Go” by Frozen. This video managed to go viral and move us especially for choosing one of the most international children’s melodies that makes us identify with our girls.
In this way, these images contribute to identification with the viewer by connecting with the affiliative gaze of which he speaks. Marianne Hirsch. This would be a process by which someone feels connected to a foreign family image and adapts it to understand it within their own family story. In this way, they empathize and connect with the other through the feelings and emotions of that shared domestic intimacy.
Some ethical questions
Close expressive planes provoke empathy. But, meanwhile, we also get open shots with corpses that show the crudest destruction from a distance. Susan Sontag I already stated that we have a special respect and sensitivity when showing the pain of “our own”, while we are more explicit with that of “the others”. In this case, it is very interesting to analyze the images that are being seen because there are shots and frames that would belong to both categories.
The recurrent debate about the ethical limits of the representation of suffering and violence appears again. To this must be added a reflection on the saturation or addiction that constant exposure to these images can produce, the combination of which can trivialize, resignify or resize suffering.
There is also reports showing that disinformation is present in the main results of the feedsand that reliable sources and disinformation are not distinguished.
Therefore, the images of the war in Ukraine bear witness to the pain and suffering of millions of people. In addition, due to the way in which they are being carried out, shared, published and broadcast, they raise interesting substantive questions. Among them are ethics, the limits of visual narratives of war and pain, and they make us wonder how we want or should represent suffering from now on.
Rebecca BrownDean of the Faculty of Communication Sciences, International University of Catalonia Y Montse Morcate, University of Barcelona
This article was originally published on The Conversation. read the original.