How have shifts from traditional to digital media circulation changed how users engage with and react to narratives surrounding images of conflict and violence?

Having examined how audiences engage with and respond to narratives surrounding images of conflict and violence across a range of wars, each characterised by differing uses of traditional and digital media, it is now possible to draw insights into how the shift from traditional to digital circulation has transformed these interactions. By comparing and contrasting the examples analysed in the previous section, we can better understand how shifts from traditional to digital media circulation have changed how users engage with and react to narratives surrounding images of conflict and violence.

• There is a greater appetitie for reaction → more discontent with society makes more reactionary.
• Ease of press makes for less restriction → compare ww2 press rationing to ukraine social media → no limitation = more sides and stories
• Far harder for the government to control narratives → gov is mentioned less through every case study → internet and freedom of information + press and less desire to support the gov.
• Desensitisation → we are increasingly exposed to the conflict making it less real → as things are increasingly digital it is easier to take delight in conflict, not all conflict shows blood anymore
• We are more likely to doubt and question → ww2 following → vietnam questioning → Iraq doubting → gaza rejecting
• War is more personal → individual stories are more identifiable through social media
• Protest has become more individualistic → digitisation attaches more to you as an individual and your acts of online protest are more indentifiable → this invokes stronger reactions from those who oppose your view (polarisation) but less from the gov/media (just as images are less real throgh digital so is protest) far easier to do digital protest.

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