The next speaker in this session at the 2026 Association of Internet Researchers conference in Mexico City is Tom Divon, whose focus is on war influencers reporting from war zones; this can provide insights into the lived experience in such spaces, but can also misrepresent and misinform about this experience.
Social media platforms have accelerated the spread of such war content, and have themselves become environments for hybrid warfare. Media no longer just disseminate conflict information, but are themselves shaping conflict conduct and participation. This has been the case for war reporting for many decades, but is now also affected by citizen journalism and influencer culture.
Historically, war coverage was the domain for war photographers, for instance, who shaped the visual narrative of sights of trauma; with the emergence of personal technologies this also extended to ordinary citizens, enabling them to become citizen journalists and eyewitness reporters. Such footage also turned into symbols of atrocity, and had they not been documented in the moment they might have been overlooked by social media.
The latest development in this history is the emergence of war influencers, using platform-specific tools to engage large audiences emotionally and politically. Such war influencers are politically motivated to share their experiences, using the platform environments to make their messages go viral and maximise reach. This taps into established platform vernaculars, turning them into micro-celebrities but also making them targets for attacks.
This turns genocidal reality into a mediated spectacle, and such influencers are often influenced by a strong sense of national identity, rallying around the flag in a time of crisis. Genuine celebrities – such as Gal Gadot for Israel, and Bella Hadid for Palestine – also get involved in this, but on the other hand there are also many virtual unknowns who are actually located in the war zones and report their experiences first-hand in a way that even war journalists may not be able to.
Such videos can make them targets for their enemies, and several such war influencers have been arrested or even killed.
