'Wounding and Witnessing’ – Digital Participation in War
Published: 18 April 2024
Commentary
Professor Andrew Hoskins, from the School of Social and Political Sciences, embarks on an ERC Advanced Research Grant journey, looking into this digital frontier. His project, 'WARSHARE - The New War Front: Digital Participation in War', aims to unravel how digital engagement alters the landscape of warfare experience and understanding.
Digital participation is transforming how war in the 21st century is fought, experienced, remembered and forgotten, distributing it across digital battlefields.
Social media platforms, messaging services and apps are enabling a range of actors - soldiers, civilians, journalists, aid workers, private companies, journalists and states – to actively participate in conflict.
Professor Andrew Hoskins, of the School of Social and Political Science, has received an ERC Advanced Research Grant, worth 2.2 million Euros, to further explore this phenomenon.
‘WARSHARE - The New War Front: Digital Participation in War’ will produce new understanding of how and why digital participation is transforming the ways in which individuals and societies fight, experience, and understand warfare.
It involves collaborations with the University of Sussex in experimenting with the revolution in machine-learning and AI methods which enable not just the mining and measuring of online behaviour, but also the interrogation of multiple modes of communication that shape participation and meaning in warfare.
WARSHARE will primarily focus on the hybrid messaging, communication and network platform Telegram, which is both the wounding and the witnessing app of choice for combatants and for civilians in Ukraine, Gaza and Israel.
In the words of Professor Hoskins: “What does it mean to participate in the digital stream of horror of war in plain sight?
“Telegram is the greatest living archive of war ever created – and the perfect weapon for all actors engaged in psychological warfare. What difference will the most documented war in history make to perception, knowledge, and memory, about warfare, and ultimately justice and accountability?
“Psychological war is free on Telegram. Record your real horror, upload, and go!”
Read more about WARSHSRE and Professor Hoskins’ work in The Scotsman.
Disclaimer: This story is behind a paywall. Contact andrew.hoskins@glasgow.ac.uk to find out more.
First published: 18 April 2024