Sharded War: seeing, not sharing

Abstract

The digital maelstrom of images, videos, messages, comments, uploaded via smartphones to Telegram and TikTok and globally remediated, place war today increasingly in plain sight. But visibility is no sign of recognition. Rather, social media shape sharded war, namely that which users experience through split, splintered, fractured, personalised, streamed and shattered feeds. Algorithmically, but also personally fed digital realities, make war as an always-on informational battle against everyone with a different opinion. In this way, using content-driven regulation, moderation and fact checking, to blunt the billions of shards of the horror of wars unfolding in Ukraine, Gaza and Israel, misses the target. Sharded war is ultimately unverified and uninspectable, in its paradoxical mix of personalised form and global scale, but also in exploiting the weakest link in the hierarchy of attention of regulators. Social media increasingly platform violence, threatening claims, narratives and realities, readily seen and experienced, but not shared.