by Oleksandra Yaroshenko
On March 29, 2022, more than a month after the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the world was shocked by the news of massacres in the Ukrainian town of Bucha committed by Russian troops. According to various estimates , about 400-500 civilianswere killed in Bucha. The exact number is still unknown: some people were captured, others went missing, and some bodies have not yet been identified. Most of the victims were executed, but some were ambushed by Russian forces while going to work, delivering food to relatives, or visiting family.
Photos documenting these horrific events were posted on social media by both local and international journalists and private bloggers. Many of these images, which became a kind of “digital trail of crime,” were labeled as “sensitive content ” byFacebook, Instagram, and Twitteralgorithms , which led to their being blocked, deleted, or blurred. Afew days after the first photos of the massacreappeared, Facebook and Twitter automatically blocked hashtags related to the events in Bucha (#BuchaMassacre, #Bucha, #RussianWarCrimes) due to graphic violence. Despite these restrictions, the tragic events in Bucha were broadcast almost in real time through media platforms.
The researchers Bartosz Hamarowski and Maria Lompe studied how specific visual narratives about war crimes are shared on social media. Drawing on research in the field of visual analysis of political and social movements and events, they considered visual representations as important digital artifacts that shape collective consciousness. They tried to find out what types of users are responsible for sharing the images that resonate most on each platform.
Capturing the digital landscape
The authors applied Visual Cross-Platform Analysis (VCPA). This methodology allows you to study both still and moving images on different social media sites, eliminating the bias of single-platform studies. They adapted cultural analytics techniques to sift through huge amounts of data, identifying dominant images and the actors behind their dissemination.
The researchers collected data from March 29 to September 15, 2022, covering approximately seven months since the first information about the crimes in northern Ukraine. Data from Twitter was collected using the 4CAT Capture and Analysis Toolkit API and 68,240 tweets were collected. Facebook and Instagram posts (4,811 and 1,477 respectively) were collected using the social monitoring platform CrowdTangle. Images were downloaded using WFDownloader, and further analysis was performed in ImageSorter, which organizes photos based on their similarity to find dominant visual and thematic patterns.
The exploratory analysis, which involved scanning the grouped images, identified nine main themes: politics, art, damage, graphic violence (images of dead bodies or body parts), non-graphic violence (body bags, wounded people), satellite imagery, infographics, press coverage (news, newspaper clippings), military, mourning, religion, and refugees. The authors also conducted a network analysis of the actors who published the photos. It allowed them to identify the images that provoked the strongest reactions from users, as well as the actors who have the greatest influence on the dissemination of visual content and the formation of a collective understanding of the events in Bucha.
Comprehensive understanding of visual narratives
The study shows that each social network covers the events in Bucha differently. On Twitter, images of destruction and violence, including the bodies of victims and scenes of mourning, are most common. Both direct and subdued forms of violence are visible here. Facebook and Instagram, on the other hand, use more metaphorical approaches to covering events. A cross-platform analysis revealed that Twitter documented the Bucha massacre in the most detail, while Facebook and Instagram had much less coverage. Instead, these platforms showcase the events through infographics, geolocated photos, media reports, and photos of politicians.
It turned out that the media use metaphorical images of mass killings, while private social media users document the reality by showing the wounded and killed.
The study revealed recurring themes and images that became symbolic of the Bucha tragedy and played an important role in shaping public perception and discourse. At the same time, gaps were noticeable: certain images and narratives that dominated one platform were absent from others. This indicates selective dissemination and potential censorship by algorithms.
Instagram demonstrated the lowest level of activity in documenting the massacre, focusing mainly on political and journalistic content. There was a higher prevalence of artistic works, often metaphorical, with references to famous works such as Picasso’s Guernica and Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, illustrating the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
Facebook, like Instagram, emphasized contextual information and photos of politicians. It did not document the massacre through images of destruction, such as destroyed buildings, bullet-riddled cars, and burned trees.
Twitter was dominated by images of “graphic violence” – the bodies of those killed in Bucha. This platform had the most images of crime scenes, destruction after shelling, and the ruins of houses and shops after the withdrawal of Russian troops. Much of the content was mourning-related photos, images of fresh graves or funerals. Thus, Twitter was the most realistic representation of the massacre in Bucha among all the platforms.
The main disseminators of news with high engagement on Instagram were media and news agency accounts, such as The New York Times, Reuters, BBC, The Washington Post, The Times of India, The Economist, CNN, and Fox Media, rather than private users. Facebook also did not have much involvement from private accounts. This can be explained by the fact that users are afraid of isolation due to the publication of controversial content. Twitter, on the other hand, offers a greater degree of anonymity, which facilitates the spread of controversial topics. This explains why the most active actors differ on different platforms, as well as the specifics of image distribution.
The role of algorithms in the representation of conflicts
The study shows that algorithmic curation affects the visibility of content. The algorithms of each platform determine which images are most often displayed and shared, influencing the overall narrative for users. This emphasizes the significant role of technology in shaping our understanding of contemporary conflicts.
Other scholars, such as Valerie Hase, Karin Boczek, and Michael Scharkow, point out that the diversity of platforms’ capacities for creating interactivity and visuality differs from those of the media. These differences form the specific logic of each platform, which affects the distribution of types of images of military conflicts.
Facebook emphasizes “interesting” or “viral” news, while focusing on “soft”, emotional or subjective content. Instagram is perceived as a brand platform, with photo sharing and limited information. Twitter prioritizes breaking news, succinctly sorted by chronology.
Researchers Michael Griffin and Jongsoo Lee note that the specific capabilities of platforms can influence the way military conflicts are presented in the media.
For example, photographs of the 1991 Gulf War in the American media tended to perpetuate a stereotypical image of war, showing the conflict through images of military equipment and soldiers, almost completely censoring images of suffering and death.
The situation is similar to the photos of the Bucha massacre on social media, where the emphasis is again on political positions rather than on the suffering of the victims, who only occasionally appear from afar or as anonymous figures covered in black bags.
The underlying logic on Twitter is different, as it more closely mirrors the findings of a 2017 study on the war in eastern Ukraine, especially on the Russian social network VKontakte. Authors Nikolai Makhortikh and Marina Sidorova point out that the conflict is portrayed mainly through photographs of civilians and graphic images of the wounded and killed. Russian VKontakte groups implicitly show the war through photos of soldiers and military equipment, while Ukrainian groups focus on civilians and everyday life.
Thus, algorithms determine which aspects of the visual representation of the conflict are prioritized, shaping the overall narrative for users. This underscores the importance of technology in shaping our perceptions of contemporary conflicts and emphasizes the need to critically reflect on the use of digital platforms in the media space.
This article was first published by EJO