Discussions about the ongoing Israel-Gaza war flood our feeds daily and the reporters who show up on Instagram have become familiar faces for many. Their work online is actively changing the way millions of people consume news content and thus, the way we form opinions based on the narratives painted for us. With increasing news consumption patterns on social media compared to print, radio, and television, it is essential to understand the alternative media sphere as it shifts and evolves into something unique to our times.
On the 7th of October 2023, the world witnessed the escalation of the century-long tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in the Gaza strip. The events of this day would lead to the longest full-scale war in the state’s history to date. I aim to present my observations of the emergence of a new époque of alternative journalists and consider how their labor provides perspectives that traditional media is unfit to portray.
25-year-old photographer, Motaz Azaiza amassed a loyal Instagram following of 17.4 million as of 2025 for his journalistic capturing of the events in his homeland - Palestine - following the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attacks. Following this, Azaiza earned the title of GQ Middle East’s “Man of the Year” 2023. Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem’s “A Palestinian Woman Embraces the Body of Her Niece” would go on to be given the title of World Press Photo of the Year Award in 2024. His snap of a woman holding her lifeless daughter sent ruptures through the media, sustaining the world’s eyes on the conflict occurring in Gaza and elsewhere.
Hind Khoudary and Wael Al-Dahdouh were too recognized by GQ for their journalistic work, both having come from traditional journalistic practice and turning to share their personal experiences and photographs of the difficulties of the Israel-Gaza war online. Scholars Nico Carpentier and Bart Cammaerts 2009 writings on the shifting landscape of war journalism noted the dynamic metamorphoses of the presentation of war narratives in mainstream news and in the practices by which the public increasingly access this news, with a focus on blogs as alternative media. The blog as a medium has been impacted by the ever-evolving digitization of media content, with traditional news steadily declining in favour of social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram.
Carpentier and Cammaert’s definition of alternative citizen’s journalism as “participatory instruments for citizens/activists to produce their own media content” remains indicative of the work created by these journalistic war photographers, although their mediums of dispersion evolve with the trends and times.
This new generation of reporters offers potentially revolutionary solutions to widespread concerns of falling news trust and monopolization, raising further ethical and practical questions in the process.
Historical Roots of War Photography
The American-Mexican war of the mid-1840’s saw the emersion of fifty daguerreotypes that societally instilled notions that would define war photography and radically shifted public moral questioning of the justification of war. The usage of photography as support to stories in newspapers quickly became a standard and regulated practice crucial to the visual dimension of a societally collective memory.
Over a decade later one of the most notable examples of prominent and public consciousness-altering images to emerge within the category was Vietnam War’s 1972 “Napalm Girl.” Captured by Nick Ut, the image fueled anti-war movements in the US and worldwide. The reception of mediated images have, for most of print media history, been presented to audiences alongside an ideological perspective which allowed mediators to present photographs to their narrative advantage. Despite reflecting a truth against the hegemonic “us vs them” narrative of mainstream media upon its publication, Ut’s photograph faced heavy debate within newsrooms, delaying its release.
Returning to Carpentier and Cammaerts recognition of the evolutions of war photography in the context of the blogosphere as a space for journalists known as the “war-blog,” we notice the next steps in alternative news media expansion into the social media sphere. Mainstream news is dictated by newsworthiness, influenced by hegemonic ideals of what is considered ‘objective’ by news media professionals who work in cooperation with governments, sector professionals, and advertisers to monetize.
These alternative online outlets of publication differ vastly from typical means of news production, defined by personal accounts, two-way communication, and often including firsthand accounts of non-media professionals as well as providing higher levels of autonomy for media professionals. These allowances stimulate introspections of legitimacy, fake news, and ethics – a topic carrying even more weight when including photography.
The Role of Social Media in War Reporting
Carpentier and Cammaerts display the idea that blogging disrupts the typical ideological model as portrayed in mainstream media, where creators are ‘produsers’ dispelling to an ‘information community.’ With a higher number of audiences becoming increasingly critical and untrusting of news media, there has been a shift in writers becoming self-critical, particularly regarding war journalism which is further expressed in the blogosphere that goes largely unmonitored. Simply put, the state of owning a warblog sets war-bloggers against hegemonic ideals as it displays that the blogger feels there is an unshared crucial perspective.
Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash
Since Carpentier and Cammaert’s 2009 writings the ways we interact with and receive news have changed massively, with video on social media becoming the most consumed form of news content. According to Reuters Digital News Report 2024, Instagram accounts such as Eye on Palestine and WarMonitor have had hugely increased reach throughout the course of the Israel-Gaza war. Accounts like these have allowed for the formation of Palestinian solidarity campaigns worldwide, featuring the re-popularizing the usage of the watermelon as a pro-Palestinian 🍉 symbol, one that initially emerged following the banning of the Palestinian flag in 1967.
It can be argued that the evolution of individual internet presence from blog to social media personality has morphed the war-blog into the war reporter social media account. These accounts protest the mainstream media narrative and offer viewpoints that professional journalism work is incapable of suggesting.
Non-profit organization, Reporters Without Borders recognized 145 journalists that have lost their lives to the Israeli Occupation Forces for their bravery to speak out, with at least 35 of these deaths linked to their journalistic work. These numbers signal the disdain of non-compliance with media-enforced propaganda in the state.
The work of these journalists stands to supply access to uncensored press and has laid the groundwork for a future of news work that prioritizes educating society rather than framing opinion to favour the powerful.
The Visual War
American cultural anthropologist, Rebecca Stein explores the difficulties that Palestinian activists and reporters have faced when publishing their visual work. This is due to censorship from the Israeli government and heavy monopolization of the state’s mainstream media of content depicting the struggles endured by Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government.
Defining this idea as the “visual war,” Stein recognizes the change of the camera from a personal device to a tool of war. The author recognizes that ideas facing censorship could have the possibility to shift public consciousness, but mainstream journalism confiscates content from the creators or “produsers” that threaten their narrative.
She notes a failure of the expectations of the digital revolution here, yet social media has, in recent years, offered a further alternative solution through allowing reporters to bypass the need for approval to publish. With visual sites such as Instagram and TikTok gaining popularity regarding news consumption compared to more text-based sites, it can be sensed that in today's attention-driven economy, visuals are the potion to lure and hook an audience. The enormous reach possibilities of social media sites due to algorithms combined with the newsworthiness of content deemed shocking and visually extreme draw eyes toward a cause.
Musk and Zuckerberg’s recent changes in censorship policy will undoubtedly pose issues regarding the containment of fake news online and rapid developments in artificial intelligence only multiply the issue. Personally, I hold onto the faith of those who are destined to report to find a way in the world to share despite the ever-growing threats to the tech world and beyond. As Sontag once said, “photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire,” compared to written pieces.
The emotional pull of a photograph and its allowance for personal interpretation that creates shareability on social media, a story without words necessary, further challenges the traditional journalism model.
The work of these reporters has a strong and growing societal impact worldwide that steadily changes the way that the public interacts with international issues and our governments alike. These social media war reporters might just be the newest face of alternative journalism, and potentially the most successful.
References
1- Al-hlou, Y. and Nikolov, N. (2023) The war in Gaza is also unfolding on Instagram, The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-war-instagram.html (Accessed: 03 January 2025).
2- Brutin, T. (2024) ‘“At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed.”’, Reporters Without Borders, 26 September.
3- Cammaerts, B. and Carpentier, N. (2009) “Blogging the 2003 Iraq War: Challenging the Ideological Model of War and Mainstream Journalism?”, Observatorio (OBS*), 3(2). doi: 10.15847/obsOBS322009276.
4- Newman, N. (2024) Overview and key findings of the 2024 Digital News Report, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Available at: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024/dnr-executive- summary (Accessed: 03 January 2025).
5- ‘News Platform Fact Sheet’. Pew Research Center, 17 Sept. 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/.
6- Nohrstedt, S.A. (2009) ‘New War journalism’, Nordicom Review, 30(1), pp. 95–112. doi:10.1515/nor-2017-0141.
7- O’Hearn, M. (2016) Seeing is believing: Early war photography | the artstor blog, Jstor. Available at: https://artstor.blog/2016/11/11/seeing-is-believing-early-war- photography/ (Accessed: 03 January 2025).
8- Reed, B. (2024) ‘Photojournalist Motaz Azaiza: “The ghosts of Gaza follow me everywhere”’, The Guardian, 16 February. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/16/motaz-azaiza-interview-gaza-ghosts-photojournalist (Accessed: 02 January 2025).
9- RSF’s 2024 Round-up: Journalism Suffers Exorbitant Human Cost Due to Conflicts and Repressive Regimes | RSF. 12 Dec. 2024, https://rsf.org/en/rsf-s-2024-round-journalism- suffers-exorbitant-human-cost-due-conflicts-and-repressive-regimes.
10- Salem, M. (2023) A Palestinian woman embraces the body of her niece, A Palestinian Woman Embraces the Body of Her Niece | World Press Photo. Available at: https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo-contest/2024/Mohammed-Salem- POY/1 (Accessed: 03 January 2025).
11- Sontag, S. (2008) Susan Sontag on photography. London, England: Penguin Classics. Stein, R.L. (2021) Screen shots: State violence on camera in Israel and Palestine. Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press.
12- Syed, Armani. ‘How the Watermelon Became a Symbol of Palestinian Solidarity’. TIME, 20 Oct. 2023, https://time.com/6326312/watermelon-palestinian-symbol-solidarity/.
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