Israel, Palestine, Iran, Pakistan: When war becomes content, critical discourse is the casualty

Odds are that in the past few weeks you have, at some point, come across the words: Fog of war. You may have tripped over them while taking a stroll in your digital backyard. A talking head on a TV news channel may have yelled the phrase at you. Or, they may have been dropped at a dinner party by someone sipping their wine and simping for war.
Typically traced back to Carl von Clausewitz, a 19th century Prussian general, the phrase alludes to the fact that war is influenced, in large part, by factors that are 'wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty'. In its original avatar, the term was formulated to explain the challenges faced by military actors and the ambiguity of information available to those present in the battlefield. Clausewitz narrowly missed the social media revolution, of course. But if he were alive today, he would have been alarmed to see how far beyond the battlefield the 'fog of war' can now spread — pervading phone and TV screens to cloud the minds of entire citizenries.
In recent years, war reportage has become a mainstay in news headlines. Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Israel-Iran, and, of course, our own showdown with our belligerent neighbours last month. These instances, by no means, form an exhaustive list — but even accounting for the biases that spotlight some conflicts while leaving others in the shadows, fresh updates about lives lost and people displaced never seem to cease. And for the most part, these updates reach us via social media.
Navigating the terabytes of data on social media is fraught with risk in the best of times. For every innocuous cat video, you are also served up deep fakes and disinformation. The online newsflash — both the fact and the fiction — is designed to be easy to believe and difficult to verify. So it is no surprise that experiencing an armed conflict through the lens of social media can prove to be problematic.
First, there is the craving for instantaneous updates. Technology has whittled our patience down to the bone. We binge-watch TV shows, never allowing cliffhangers to torment us for more than a few minutes. Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have to grip us within seconds before we dismiss them with a swipe of our thumbs. Naturally, we expect war coverage to also adhere to this schedule of immediacy. The morning's headlines become stale by noon, and we yearn for the next piece of breaking news — a cycle that results in the second problem: Shallow engagement.
A two-minute video offering a 'complete breakdown' of trending news is hard to ignore. In a deluge of information, they offer a convenient shortcut to help us stay abreast of the latest developments. But they come at the cost of depth and nuance. Experts on Instagram may be a whizz at making 20-word summaries of international relations, but an analysis of the historical and political context of any conflict can never fit into a carousel post. Unfortunately, when a conveyor belt of bite-sized updates keeps us hooked, we have neither the time nor the inclination to deepen our understanding of the world.
This absence of a well-rounded perspective is exacerbated by the architecture of social media. The content we see is tailored to our tastes, preferences, and socio-economic profile. Our timelines are echo chambers, they tell us what we want to hear and filter out all that we find bothersome. This is the third drawback of making social media our primary source of news: We can only ever see parts of the whole, like the moon waning or waxing but never full.
When we block content that is objectionable to us or 'like' threads that align with our views, the algorithm takes diligent notes. It is vigilant in ensuring that contrarian opinions do not make it to our feed. Critical discourse becomes a casualty, and we are offered a narrative we are most likely to accept. When we see content that resonates with us, we are emboldened to choose a side and add our own voice to the chorus — which, in turn, leads us to the fourth pitfall: Performative online behaviour.
We have put our lives on display to the natives of the internet. Meals, holidays, and even mundane minutiae — everything makes its way to our digital diaries. We are careful to present our best version to our followers, and so we have an obligation to perform our moral outrage for their benefit. On Independence Day, we demonstrate our patriotism with status updates containing a liberal sprinkling of the tricolour and a track of the national anthem. When Gaza is obliterated, we sandwich an 'Eyes on Gaza' story between snaps from our anniversary dinner. And when we hear of countries supplying drones to our opponents, we cancel our vacations to proclaim our loyalty. After all, righteous rage is impotent without an audience.
None of this is to say we must shun social media. Along with its ills, it has many virtues: Not least being a platform that gives space to voices outside the mainstream. It can help form communities and spread ideas. As with all powerful tools, however, we must exercise caution in the ways we use it. We must be wary of the hold social media has over us, the ways in which it can shape our thinking, particularly in times of strife. It will always serve up gaudy baubles that are intended to captivate us. The trick is in knowing when to look away.
The writer is a Mumbai-based lawyer

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