Today’s Russian war against Ukraine is unique in its unfolding through a prism of personalized realities, made and remade for individuals, in what we call the “...
Today’s Russian war against Ukraine is unique in its unfolding through a prism of personalized realities, made and remade for individuals, in what we call the “war feed.”
A digital multitude posting, liking, sharing, and applauding each individual image or short form video, are all participants in a fractalized psychological war.
We focus on the messaging app Telegram as a rapidly evolving weapon of psychological warfare, which utterly disrupts the relationship between the showing, hiding, and the seeing of modern war. There seems little point in raging against ineffectual moderation and regulation of social media platforms, whilst the world burns on Telegram.
The war feed is a new spectrum of warfare located in and through messaging apps and platforms. It is how individual locating and targeting, surveillance, psychological operations, trolling, and disinformation, are all enabled through digital networks, streams, and archives. These aspects of war thrive precisely because of the rapid growth in the recording and sharing of all those on the battlefield, and their clicking, swiping, linking, liking, emoting, sharing stories, messages, images, memes, and videos.