Pagina dettaglio corso numero uno

by Chiara Chisari, Research Fellow at the University of Milan

The ongoing genocide in Gaza is widely recognized as the most ‘social’ in history. Never before has an armed conflict, a massacre, or any large-scale atrocity been so widely shared and discussed through digital platforms. With international media facing limited access to the war zone, social media has become a vital source of information—enabling immediate, decentralized, and transnational circulation of images and personal testimonies.

Naturally, the information shared on these platforms has not been without distortion. In response to government pressure or due to internal moderation policies, platforms have implemented censorship measures—often disproportionately affecting Arabic-speaking users and pro-Palestinian content, especially in certain countries. Social media has also played a role in deepening polarization, flattening complex perspectives into binary narratives and amplifying divisive emotions like outrage and anger.

Yet, it is precisely within this tense and contradictory digital space that voices often excluded from mainstream media have found a platform. By amplifying the stories of those experiencing violence firsthand, social media has, at times, helped shift attention away from official, institutional narratives of the conflict and toward the lived realities of those caught in it. In doing so, it brings a sense of reality and closeness to a crisis that, from afar, might otherwise feel abstract and difficult to fully grasp.

This unique form of storytelling is especially significant for the way it shapes our perception of the genocide—and, more specifically, of the people living through it.

Broadly speaking, it is important to recognize that media do not simply function as neutral transmitters of information. Rather, they operate as ideological apparatuses—actively shaping meaning, guiding public opinion, and influencing the frameworks through which we understand what is “other” or outside of ourselves. When it comes to conflict, numerous studies have shown that traditional media have historically played a role in enabling dehumanization, using a range of rhetorical and visual strategies: reducing the other to a threat, erasing emotional depth and empathy, concealing suffering, and presenting violence in a decontextualized way. As Judith Butler argues in Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), these strategies effectively deny the other the status of a human being capable of suffering—and therefore deserving of grief, recognition, and legal protection. In short, dehumanizing media discourse helps suspend basic moral codes and, in doing so, legitimizes oppression and the extreme use of force.

In the case of the genocide in Gaza, several studies have pointed to the use of such tactics by mainstream media. Informed by Islamophobic bias and colonial-era stereotypes, Palestinians—especially Palestinian men—have often been depicted as dangerous, violent, and misogynistic, cast solely as “aggressors” or “terrorists.” Even in reports of bombings or clear human rights violations, newspapers and TV news have frequently stripped Palestinians of their humanity, resorting to impersonal phrases like “targets hit,” or justifying violence against them in the name of Israeli security, portraying Israel as a state simply “defending itself.”

These portrayals have also made their way into digital spaces. The narrative pushed by Israeli authorities on social media has been deeply dehumanizing: lethal military operations against Palestinians have been accompanied by slogans and music videos, creating a spectacle that deliberately erases human suffering, normalizes violence, and dulls the viewer’s capacity for empathy. Similar dynamics can also be observed on platforms not directly tied to state propaganda. A striking example is found on platforms like Tinder, where Israeli soldiers actively deployed in Gaza have posted selfies with weapons, often set against the backdrop of rubble and destruction. As documented by Italian photographer Federico Vespignani in his project Short-Term, But Long-Term, these images blur the lines between war and seduction, fueling a kind of “erotic militarization” in which violence is aestheticized—and even romanticized—within the realm of personal relationships.

Yet despite the reach of these dehumanizing narratives, they have not fully dominated the digital media landscape. Western audiences, in particular, are increasingly exposed to content that paints a very different picture—one that restores humanity and complexity to the Palestinian people. Through the widespread sharing of direct testimonies and raw footage—often captured on smartphones and circulated primarily on platforms like Instagram and TikTok—an alternative narrative has taken shape. It disrupts the monolithic image of Palestinians as “terrorists,” instead portraying them as fathers, mothers, children, doctors, or journalists. Here, what matters is not only the documentation of violence, but also the visibility of everyday life under siege—of pain, of care, of solidarity.

In short, in contrast to the erasure of Palestinian victimhood and resilience, social media have become spaces of discursive resistance, capable of challenging the dominant symbolic order. They have fostered an emotional and visual proximity that is actively undermining institutionalized stereotypes and prejudice. This, in turn, is helping cultivate empathy and global mobilization—both essential to imagining a nonviolent resolution to the conflict.