Reconfiguring the Mediatization of War: Palestinian Citizen Journalism and Instagram Publics

This study delves into the phenomenon of Palestinian citizen journalism since October 7th, 2023, and its influence on the mediatization of war. Mainstream media’s lack of access to Gaza has led Gazan citizens to use their smartphones to report on their genocide and audiences to seek information about the conflict on social media. We argue that this may be indicative of a shift in war mediatization, leading to a more open-ended and citizen-led state of mediatization. Through a multimodal analysis of several Instagram posts from three Palestinian citizen journalists, we investigate what discourses stand out in their reporting, and through a thematic analysis of Instagram comments, we delve into the different observer positions that emerge from engaging with those discourses. Our findings show that these Palestinian citizen journalists all use discourses of vulnerability and witnessing to engage with their audiences, usually evoking feelings of resistance. We also identified four types of observers within their audiences, influenced by Mortensen and Trenz’s (2016) own categorization: emotional, critical, reflexive, and motivated. These findings suggest that Palestinian counter-narratives are gaining traction in the public discourse, and therefore, a shift in the mediatization of war may indeed be occurring.