Visualizing War in The Digital Age: Feminist Aesthetics and Open-Source Investigations
Oleksii Hulak, National flag of independent Ukraine waving in the wind, April 22, 2022, stock photo, Upsplash, https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/national-flag-of-independent-ukraine-waving-in-the-wind-gm1392548688-448752445
Introduction
The rise of civilian-led open-source investigations conducted by agencies and institutions such as the New York Times, Forensic Architecture, and Bellingcat have significantly altered the visualization of violence and political conflict in the digital age. Drawing upon the voluminous amount of user-generated content that floods social media platforms from YouTube to TikTok and X to Instagram, such agencies have reconceptualized the depiction of war, producing a marked aesthetic shift in digital reporting on civil and human rights violations. This article examines how new aesthetic techniques born of open-source research present ethical dilemmas in the coverage of war and, more specifically, the depiction of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In examining open-source aesthetics, which are often clinical and exacting, this article explores how feminist methodologies might offer reparative modes of envisioning conflict to ensure greater social justice. The case study presented in this paper analyzes an open-source report produced by the New York Times Visual Investigations Unit, including a formal analysis of a contemporary video documenting the Ukrainian/Russian conflict, examining the way that truth claims are asserted through the “right to look,” as theorized by Nicholas Mirzoeff.[1] Through the prism of this theory, I contend that open-source counter-visualities can effectively challenge state power and could benefit from the deployment of feminist aesthetics that humanize digital formations of marginalized subjects with greater empathy, more robust ethical protocols, and efficacious strategies.
Open-Source Investigations as Digital Resistance
The Berkeley Protocol defines Open-Source Investigations as “investigations that rely, in whole or in part, on publicly available information to conduct formal and systematic online inquiries into alleged wrongdoing.”[2] This practice harnesses the abundance of user-generated content available online which has altered the visual landscape of the internet, producing new interpretations of visuality and its impact on global society. From the earliest incarnation of the web to the proliferation of contemporary social media platforms, the vast amount of visual content now available exceeds any individual’s capacity to conduct effective analysis without algorithmic assistance. In confronting big data, digital forensics has become an essential tool in identifying, collecting, verifying, and analyzing human rights violations made apparent in videos and images uploaded to multiple sites by everyday citizens, victims, and perpetrators. This deluge of imagery has prompted the ingenuity of individuals and institutions to assume an investigative stance and to view the internet not simply as a medium for accessing information, purchasing products, or exchanging messages but as an activist terrain useful for exposing and attempting to resolve human rights abuses.
In the legal field, investigations and the user-generated content utilized must be discovered, verified, authenticated, and preserved to gain credibility and ensure relevance in a court of law. Much of open-source investigation digital verification requires acquiring a sophisticated skill set by which investigators exploit the full capacity of digital databases and social media platforms to identify suspects and authenticate information. Critical to this process is the geolocation and chrono location of user-generated content. Geolocation is the determination of a user's or device's physical location, whereas chrono location is the window of time in which an event took place.[3]
The nuances of this process underpin the current shift toward civilian-led open-source investigations that deploy investigative skills not unlike those used by police units attempting to resolve a crime. The advent of civilian-led investigations has thus propelled the New York Times Visual Investigation Uunit, Forensic Architecture, Bellingcat, The Syrian Archive, and numerous other institutions and agencies to form a renaissance of digital resistance, frequently working in concert to expose, verify, preserve, and disseminate evidence of human rights abuses discoverable online.
Christian L, Human Rights For Future signage, January 17, 2020, photograph, Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/human-rights-for-future-signage-P0JL8np1N6k
In tandem with the establishment of these recent agencies, the ethics, protocols, and aesthetics of open-source investigations and their resulting public-facing reports are in a nascent stage. While visualizing violence for consciousness-raising and activist campaigns formulated in resistance to state violence is not new, the procedures by which images are collected, analyzed, and displayed for activist purposes have radically changed. Thus, this article considers how the implementation of feminist aesthetics can be contextualized by utilizing a tri-part model to humanize the visualization of violence by deploying an ethics of care throughout open-source investigative processes.
Truth Claims in the Digital Public Sphere
The application of Nicholas Mirzoeff’s concepts of the “right to look” and the “right to the real” are intrinsic to open-source investigations for they illuminate how civilians are forming effective counter-narratives that challenge state power. In parsing through user-generated content and determining truths from falsehoods, the “right to look,” provides a valuable prism for analysis. Mirzoeff articulates the need for people to maintain their autonomy over and against a regime of representation to assert an authentic “claim to a political subjectivity and collectivity.”[4] The “right to look,” in this instance, confers such a collectivity with the ability to determine the “right to the real” or what is considered the truth in any given conflict, through the production of counter visualities that may have been rendered invisible under the force of repressive authorities.[5] In open-source investigations, the “right to the real” has become an essential rubric by which civilian activists can harness the power of images to advance truth claims that would otherwise be falsified and subsumed by state power. Hence, the “right to the real,” in this instance, affords civilians involved in open-source work a measure of power through the interrogation of user-generated content that the state or its paramilitary auxiliaries may mobilize for malevolent aims.
In considering the Ukrainian/Russian conflict, it is essential to examine how truth claims are asserted through user-generated content, given the amount of propaganda disseminated throughout this war. The power to document and circulate human rights violations is not solely reserved for those seeking to hold perpetrators accountable. Often the perpetrators themselves will document their actions and unwittingly share this information by posting it online. For instance, Russia is fighting the war in Ukraine both in person and online. Russia's propaganda generates support against Ukraine through false claims, misinformation, and manipulated images and videos. The hyper circulation of Russian propaganda propelled by algorithms drives a narrative of support for Russia rather than showcasing the actual impacts and motive of the war on Ukraine.[6] Therefore, Russia can exploit military personnel and civilians because the information that Russia disseminates is biased in the country’s favor, perpetuating a multiplicity of falsehoods. Thus, digitized Russian propaganda adheres to Mirzoeff’s conception of the right to the real, which connotes that power is maintained by the authority of the visualizer.[7]
Powerful entities, such as nation-states, deem particular images important to determine what is knowable and what is sayable within discourse concerning a sociopolitical event. The authority of the visualizer thus controls the interpretation of reality. The different layers of the right to real extend to different institutions such as the state, academia, and the press, which affect how people working for justice operate because they must contend with how the visualizer contextualizes such information. This challenge prompts us to question whose version of reality, of the truth, and of what occurred during a violation is legitimate. By deploying open-source investigations, justice advocates act as witnesses and assert varying truth claims within the digital public sphere to work for the full transparency of information. Instead of believing the authority, the right to the real can now be secured by the digital verification process utilized by these investigators. This process analyzes user-generated content and ensures that videos and images are geographically and temporally accurate representations that often conflict with the original source’'s statements about the information posted. For instance, open-source investigations that successfully claim the right to the real uncover Russia’s false propaganda claims and inform constituents about the human rights violations occurring in Ukraine. Hence, the right to the real can only be established by ensuring the veracity of user-generated content, and promoting its accurate interpretation through narrativizing information in a counter-visual fashion. These counter-visualities have become essential due to the false claims put forth by bad social actors and repressive government regimes, which are challenged and amended by progressive open-source investigative institutions. A counter-visuality challenges the power of what is considered normal and true by state power with what is real.[8]
In the digital age, open-source investigations have emerged as a sub-discipline in many fields, including journalism, human rights, and the law. Open-source is defined as information that is freely and legally available to the public (e.g., Google Earth satellite imagery) rather than its contrast, closed-source, which is information that is private and only accessible to those who have privileges (e.g., medical records, bank statements, and the like). The Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open-Source Investigations states that open-source information is “publicly available information that anyone can obtain by request, purchase, or observation.”[9] Common open sources include social media posts, public records, satellite images, civilian-shot footage, and broadcast media.
Of the many open sources available to investigators, social media has provided a boon for analyzing user-generated content, given the vast amount of information posted daily. “As of June 2022, more than 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. This equates to approximately 30,000 hours of newly uploaded content per hour.”[10] On Instagram, 40 billion photos and videos are posted daily.[11] X (formerly called Twitter), with a centralized platform for text and characters, is also integral to open-source investigations. A study found that about 65 million tweets of all types are posted daily, which adds up to 750 tweets posted per second.[12] TikTok is also generating mass amounts of content with “approximately 11 million monthly active users (also called MAU, a standard metric for social media platforms). By June 2020, that number was 92 million MAUs.”[13] Given the plethora of platforms and the volume of information therein, the exposure of human rights abuses is inevitable as those living through global conflicts attempt to assert their views online. The war in Ukraine differs, though, from other instances of documented conflicts because instead of content streamlined from one platform, “Ukraine has remained consistent in hyper-documentation across all platforms.”[14] Thus, the war in Ukraine is truly the first war to become a multi-platform spectacle in which government officials, civilians, victims, and perpetrators overlap in their production and posting of images and content, providing ample evidence of human rights violations and an abundance of information prime for open source investigations.
From Surveillance to the Advent of Multidirectional Sousveillance
The notion of surveillance, the act of being watched by an authority, is omnipresent in our lives as well as its opposition sousveillance, the act of observing an authority from “below.” The advent of the internet and social media have accelerated the potential of Multidirectional Sousveillance, the idea that sousveillance can be conducted from many different perspectives and in turn, overpower authorities, which is a key element of open-source investigations. There are currently many different surveillance systems and surveillant subjects, each overlapping in a multiplicity of ways. Michael Foucault’s conceptualization of the panopticon is an influential theory concerning visibility and its interiorization, upon which surveillance studies have arisen.[15] The power of the panopticon creates a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring, supervising, and correcting the abnormal through self-regulation, which gives rise to disciplinary measures. The subject is uncertain if they are being watched; however, the fear of punishment develops “an inner compulsion to ‘do the right thing’ as prescribed by the organization, which produces ‘docile bodies.’”[16] In this formulation of surveillance, we all become objects of information to be studied, analyzed, dissected, and controlled through large institutions such as schools, prisons, the military, hospitals, and factories.
In contrast with panopticism, Gilles Deleuze theorizes that we are in a post-modernized panopticon which he articulates as a “control society” in which surveillance is embedded into our everyday lives, incentivizing “good” citizens to identify those deemed suspicious.[17] The control society utilizes economic values such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and other identifiable implementations to define and regulate society.[18] Yet other theorists such as Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson suggest that we are emerging from a postmodern panopticon through digital technologies, and live within a surveillant assemblage that creates information “by abstracting human bodies from their territorial settings and separating them into a series of discrete flows. These flows are then reassembled in different locations as discrete and virtual “‘data doubles.’”[19] The assemblage thus cannot be secured with only one focal point but rather is constituted through weaving together disparate points of data from different locations, both physical and digital.
In contrast to surveillance theories, sousveillance is defined as the counter-visuality of surveillance. The French term prefix “sur” denotes “to watch from above,” whereas “sous” denotes “to watch from below.” Sousveillance is leveraged to “watch the watchers” by the average citizen rather than those vested with authority. This inversion “refers both to hierarchical sousveillance, e.g., citizens photographing the police, shoppers photographing shopkeepers, and taxi-cab passengers photographing cab drivers, as well as personal sousveillance (bringing cameras from the lamp posts and ceilings, down to eye-level, for human-centered recording of personal experience).”[20] In the digital age, cellular technology has made confronting state power through visualizations ubiquitous. Sousveillance, thus, becomes a form of self-defense for civilians caught within asymmetrical power relations.
In an era of intersecting gazes from above and below, I contend that a form of multidirectional sousveillance has emerged in which each large-scale political event is documented from an infinite array of perspectives. Multidirectional sousveillance is evident through protests, natural disasters, and wars when a mass amount of content is streamed, posted, or shared, gaining public attention and political momentum. Multidirectional sousveillance is thus the hyperawareness of a situation due to the mass documentation of all parties involved in the event. Unlike the panopticon where a central force is “ensuring a surveillance which would be both global and individualizing while at the same time carefully separating the individuals under observation,” the form of sousveillance I am articulating is demonstrated from all demographics of the masses towards a central force be it a political entity or event.[21] The power of the people becomes apparent through multidirectional sousveillance, for it identifies perpetrators and elevates victims. Those engaged in multidirectional sousveillance mobilize their personal viewpoints individually, then amass into an intricate web of connections that showcase different visual, social, and political angles to confront and intervene in state power.
An example of multidirectional sousveillance was exhibited during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. During this event, hundreds of thousands of civilians documented their experiences while protesting racial injustice and in opposition to police and alt-right groups. The authority of the police was showcased through body cam footage, surveillance cameras, and aerial footage, whereas civilian protestors used cell phone or camera footage to combat these forms of surveillance. Both state and civilian parties captured different mediated perspectives while documenting the same situation. Yet because of the sheer volume of protestors in contrast to the relatively small numbers of police, civilians could claim “the right to the real” because of the volume of their counter-visual accounts of the protests. Such hyper-documentation of an event enables civilians to effectively establish an accurate timeline of events that can then contend with the potentially biased accounts relayed by police, military, and government figures. In essence, the collective act of media production dispersed amongst hundreds and thousands of civilians potentially outweighs the immensity of surveillance state power and can secure an event’s accurate narrativization. Through multidirectional sousveillance, the dynamic between civilians and authorities is effectively altered, rendering transparent human rights violations through a critical mass of viewers and a titanic amount of content that cannot be devalued or ignored by the state. From a singular moment of racialized violence, as displayed in the murder of George Floyd, to a large-scale conflict manifest in Ukraine, the power of visualizations from “above” and “below” reshapes our relationship to the mediatization of conflicts and injustice.
Toward An Ethics of Care
To protect against the re-traumatization of audiences exposed to images of violence, an application of a new feminist aesthetic paradigm is necessary for holding human rights violators accountable. Hyper-documentation on behalf of victims through the depiction of violence online looks to transparency itself as a form of justice. Yet, a display of violated bodies can negatively afflict the audience and those directly affiliated with the violent content displayed. The bystander witnessing a violent event in the digital age feels responsible for documenting what they see to demand accountability. However, the thought that the violated subject will be harmed at the expense of sharing is overlooked in seeking justice. This results in an oversaturation of violent images online that may not secure justice, but rather cause further harm to those represented in compromised situations.[22] Safiya Umoja Noble theorizes that the hyper-circulation of African American death and dying in online media causes additional trauma and stressors for African American viewers.[23] An influx of negative images results in adverse mental health within communities connected to the victim. This effect directly relates to the idea of “compassion fatigue” theorized by David Campbell, in which after viewing an abundance of graphic images, viewers face adverse effects rather than desensitization because "caring too much can hurt. In other words, compassion fatigue is prompted by an excess of compassion rather than a lack of compassion.”[24] Holding those who publish images of visceral violence to a higher standard is thus imperative while still recognizing the importance of exposing such images, for they can catalyze discourse through emotional appeals that prompt viewers to fight for social change.
With the rise of social media applications, user-generated content has grown exponentially. While sites like X aim to “prohibit the glorification of violence” through their user policies much graphic content is posted and accessible to all. Content moderation on X is limited and consists of “self-regulation,” in which users can preface the content they post with a warning or report abusive or graphic content on another user's feed.[25] However, the images of violence that many users post are decontextualized and offer little analysis. Users see a victim’s trauma with no explanation, resulting in desensitization and portraying the victim as just another statistic in an endless feed of violated bodies. Susie Linfield points to the ramifications of this decontextualization when she states, "It remains to be seen how we use their disastrous history in the creation of our own; it is difficult to imagine that we can do that well without a deeper understanding of their suffering.”[26] With little to no context, viewers cannot be educated, resulting in an impoverished understanding of any visualization of violence.
Utilizing a feminist approach to videos and images of violence would entail granting greater context and publishing content using a polyvocal approach to victim and witness testimony. A polyvocal narration combines elements of all non-linear witness testimony to explain the situation, among other digital techniques.[27] Another way to mitigate viewer and victim harm would be to silence sounds of pain or harm with sound effects or remove the sound altogether. The depiction of the victim victimized instills a sense of pity in the audience which the creates a power dynamic where the victim’s weakness against the perpetrator’s strength is highlighted. The depiction of the victimized instills "pity [which] creates a top-down relation in which one person's power is predicated on another's weakness."[28] These power dynamics can be shifted through a feminist approach to visualizing violence in order to provide respect and dignity in contextualizing death and pain rather than capitalizing upon it. Although many users who document human rights abuses are well-intentioned, the viral nature of such videos and the shock value they rely upon do little to attain justice or educate the public about the crime's complexity. Thus, a robust set of aesthetic approaches must be developed to ensure ethical representations.[29]
The aim to develop ethical approaches to open-source investigations and their attendant aesthetics is currently being developed by several open-source agencies. Sophie Dyer and Gabriela Ivens envision potential methodologies for feminist open-source investigations in their inaugural article on the subject entitled, “What Would A Feminist Open-Source Investigation Look Like?”[30] In this piece, they note the need for an ethics of care in the investigative process that could protect investigators, subjects, and their kin.[31] These measures include accounting for the investigative team’s safety in publishing as well as privacy for the victim(s), addressing power relations within the investigative team and the political context of the subjects, striving for transparency and equity when producing or finding data, and fostering honest discourse and collaboration amongst the investigation’s team members.
Recommendations for ethical open-source investigations are also presented through the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkley, which calls for effective and ethical ways to practice open-source investigations representative of human rights.[32] UC Berkeley’s stated goal is to identify and shield participants and victims from "physical, psychosocial, and digital risks" entailed by such investigations. The protocol also values the importance of "humility, inclusivity, independence, and transparency" of all participating individuals. A particular action to uphold this objective is to “integrate safeguards concerning the digital, physical and psychosocial security of witnesses, survivors, other investigators, those accused and others who may be negatively affected.”[33] Part of instilling such measures involves carefully weighing the ramifications of visibility and exercising the right to curtail the release of graphic depictions of violated subjects in particular circumstances. Choosing to censor the graphic content of raw footage from a violent event can be a conscientious decision to protect the humanity of the violated. With a multitude of global reports being published that focus primarily on minority populations, most agencies working with open-source research acknowledge their privilege and power to avoid a voyeuristic relationship between their position as analysts and the subjects they portray.
Dyer and Ivens note that open-source investigations present us with "a new, disembodied digital frontier where anything goes," which prompts the need for a feminist intervention that can ethically address embodied violence.[34] Given the lack of a compelling protocol governing the totality of open-source agencies and the methods by which they represent their findings, it has become necessary to establish a framework that defines feminist aesthetics in theory and application. Prioritizing feminist ethics of care and translating this into aesthetic strategies involves imagining new techniques and developing new tools to render them. To date, the aesthetics employed in open-source investigations deploy conventional approaches drawn from reportage, architectural modeling, and graphic design. My research seeks to identify new approaches that could better protect the dignity of victims by providing enhanced context, altering the soundscape of open-source reports, and diminishing the potential traumatization of investigators, subjects, and viewers seeking justice. Open-source research promises that it encourages creative and critical civilian-led teams to rectify civil and human rights abuses independent of state or corporate entities. Developing a feminist aesthetic framework to depict such research will strengthen its impact.
Envisioning a Tripart Model
Ultimately, feminist aesthetics could be implemented with a three-point approach to constructing public-facing videos of investigative reports—a feminist- centered tripart model. Utilizing this model could mitigate harm and change the portrayal of open-source investigations.
First, the opening scenes of a video could focus on providing ample background information that humanizes the victim and showcases their life rather than their death. Who was the victim before the event? What did they stand for? What was their relationship with their family like? What were their passions? By answering these questions, viewers will be better equipped to mourn the victims with empathy rather than reducing a victim to a one-dimensional figure by only highlighting their death or injury.
Throughout the initial part of a video report, multiple portraits of the victim should be selected to highlight their dimensionality in life selected by the victims themselves if still extant or their family members if they have been killed. In this way, a greater sense of their humanity would be parlayed to the viewer with images that highlight positive moments in their lives and avoid reductive portrayals.
In tandem with images, the narration is also an essential element. Hewing to the conventions of documentary films, many open-source investigations publish reports that utilize an omniscient narrator. This disembodied voice generally speaks in a monotone fashion, only relaying the facts of an event. This results in a disconnection between the often -emotional content portrayed, producing a sense of voyeurism on the viewer's part, which could be rectified by creating emotive narration that is both dynamic and passionate. Utilizing a feminist aesthetic might also entail deploying a polyvocal approach in which equal testimonial weight is granted to the victim’s family, friends, and the organizations that support them (for example, the NAACP, or AAPI) and limiting quotes from perpetrators.
The midpoint scenes (or second point in this tripart model) of a video report could emphasize personal testimony by creating art that alludes to the actual images of the violation. Whether through paper modeling, clay animation, or drawn 3D modeling, an emphasis on the human could be rendered through art to showcase a caring way of exploring what occurred. A successful example of art being used to address grave acts of violence is evident in the film The Missing Picture, directed by Rithy Panh. Instead of depicting the horrors of the Khmer Rouge directly with still photographs and film footage, Panh hired an artist to create whittled wooden figurines that were hand-painted with delicate care. This approach was an innovative and thought-provoking way to address mass death and educate the public as to the extent of the Cambodian genocide and should be used as inspiration.[35] Additionally, using art techniques can assist in recovery from traumatic events. Thus, if investigators collaborate with victims, both parties could benefit from the therapeutic capacities inherent in this process.
The third step, or final stage of the video report, would address the nature of the violent act being investigated realistically. Before illustrating this, a graphic content warning should be given both visually and audibly with a detailed message that specifies the nature of the violations subsequently imaged. This warning could protect viewers from experiencing trauma by granting them the choice of whether they would like to view more graphic content. Such footage should only be made accessible to viewers with the family’s consent, and their consent should be noted in the audio/visual content warning.
In the analysis of the footage portrayed, every caution should be utilized to mitigate further trauma and ensure the dignity of the victim(s) portrayed. In current open-source reports, many agencies use exacting lines and rigid boxes to indicate the nature of violations, circumscribing the victims in clinical terms. Instead, investigators could use hand-drawn circles to replace digitally rendered lines and boxes to avoid a clinical computer-generated aesthetic.
Example of clinical dehumanizing aesthetics to identify Kyiv, Ukraine.
Additionally, the sound used to underscore these representations could be considered in transformative ways. For instance, if there are gunshots in the footage integral to the investigation, these could be replaced with the sound of gunshots at a higher frequency or a sound effect that would help protect viewers diagnosed with PTSD from auditory triggers. By intentionally altering the soundscape of reports, investigators would ensure that the portrayed violations are not dramatized excessively.
Finally, every measure should be taken to protect the identities of those portrayed in the video and those who posted the initial content online by removing any information that could result in source identification. In the closing scenes of the report, the investigator’s research methodologies should be rendered visible with a data visualization that makes each step transparent, illuminating any potential bias encountered while investigating.
Formal Analysis: Bucha Violations
To hinder any form of re-traumatization on the part of victims or viewers, I propose that such reporting should implement a feminist approach to open-source aesthetics to produce an ethics of care. This case study will implement a feminist approach to open-source aesthetics by deconstructing the Bucha Massacre open-source investigation by the New York Times Visual Investigations Unit utilizing a tripart model. In the digital age, social media extends to all areas of life, including war. The Russo-Ukrainian War Ukrainian/Russian conflict is one of the most documented wars of all time, according to Daniel Johnson, a former U.S. Army officer, and journalist, who explains that geolocation, live streaming content, and multiple platforms are all serving to illuminate different dimensions of the war.[36] Additionally, the circulation of video from the front lines helps to provide a first-hand account of human rights violations at the hands of perpetrators. The preservation of these videos can be used for legal action to “expose the horrors of the war in Ukraine.”[37] The video “Caught on Camera, Traced by Phone: The Russian Military Unit That Killed Dozens in Bucha," produced by the New York Times Visual Investigations Uunit, is an open-source investigation on the Russo-Ukrainain War Ukrainian/Russian conflict produced through video media that is symbolic of new techniques being used to visualize violence and hold perpetrators accountable.[38] The video is holistic in its approach to explaining the barbaric attack on Bucha by the Russian army and, as such, provides a clear case study for feminist intervention.
Sonia D, A large rusted out tank sitting on the side of a road, March 6, 2023, photograph, Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/a-large-rusted-out-tank-sitting-on-the-side-of-a-road-SxFGG1cIOw0
During March 2022 in Bucha, potential war crimes were committed against Ukrainians by Russian soldiers. Dozens of innocent Ukrainian civilians were murdered by the 234th regiment, a Russian paratrooper unit that seized territory on Yablunska St. The military unit was moving through Bucha to get to Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. the New York Times Visual Investigations Unit explored photo and video evidence, phone records, documents, and interviews to hold the perpetrators accountable.
In the beginning scenes of the video, cell phone footage portrays motionless, dead bodies strewn across the street. These corpses have their hands tied behind their back and face the ground. The video then switches to monotone narration explaining the attack. While the graphic content displayed demonstrates the brutal atrocities of the war, the deceased are unfortunately reduced to mere bodies and statistics. While this report does make some effort to mitigate harm and offer greater context by portraying the victims through portraits taken while they were alive early in the video, this methodology could be utilized throughout the remainder of the report as well, for in later scenes they are only referred to by their names and the images of their dead bodies.
Additionally, instead of solely including the graphic content of their killings, the second element of the tripart approach to feminist aesthetics could be implemented. Calling upon eyewitnesses or surviving family members, the report could provide an artistic rendering of the carnage produced by sketch artists and include narration from survivors of the attack. By melding art and a polyvocal approach, the monotone male narrator who is removed from the story could be replaced with humanizing elements. As seen throughout this video, the survivors of the massacre provided testimony that granted context and emotion to the tragedy. In contrast, this eyewitness testimony could be given equal weight cultivating a polyvocal approach that would express a range of sentiments.
Finally, when detailing the location of victims’ bodies found by geolocation, this report used exacting boxes with perfunctory labels. Humans were represented as red circles, which reduced their deaths to a diagram. A simple shape representing dozens of lives lost creates a clinical distance for the viewer, and instead, feminist aesthetics could be implemented with a humanistic rendering of the victim’s portraits tied to the location of their death. In this way, the content would remain the same but place a greater emphasis on respecting the victims.
Throughout the video, scenes showcased each killing through graphic images of violence. In one scene, an image appears portraying six Ukrainian men dead in compromising positions. The men are sprawled, lifeless, filthy, unclothed, and surrounded by trash. Showing this image lacks respect for the deceased. Specifically, in this video, the killings of the volunteer guards who enlisted into the territorial defense to protect Bucha are integral to the story's context because their murders show that Russia perpetrated human rights violations. With these graphic images, the third element of the three-step approach to feminist aesthetics could show a detailed graphic content warning, including audio and text, preparing viewers for exactly what will be displayed.
Conclusion
In the digital age, the collective act of multidirectional sousveillance deployed in current conflicts mobilizes transparency on behalf of victims and is augmented by the practice of open-source investigations. The impulse to publish such investigations stems from a desire to secure social justice, though the publication of such reports could potentially cause further harm to the victims if such reports are not humanized. In many open-source reports currently being published, images of violence are given a cutting-edge modern look with neutral monochromatic displays and elaborate digital reconstructions. Spatial technologies may create an accurate model of an event. However, in stripping down to minimalist aesthetics, the risk is that such reports may obscure the true nature of the victims' experience. Are clinical aesthetics the most efficacious approach, or does the high production value detract from the emotional content being addressed? I propose that the application of feminist aesthetics could provide a reparative model for visualizing violence by producing a victim-centered investigation that contextualizes their humanity in richer ways. Through artistic renderings, polyvocal testimony, and altering soundscapes, the “right to the real” can be achieved by providing greater context and establishing a more attuned ethics of care.
Notes
[1] Nicholas Mirzoeff, “The Right to Look,” Critical Inquiry 37, no. 3 (2011): 473–96. https://doi.org/10.1086/659354.
[2] “Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations,” (OHCHR, and the Human Rights Center, 2022), vii. https://humanrights.berkeley.edu/berkeley-protocol-digital-open-source-investigations.
[3] Alice Thudt, Dominikus Baur, and Sheelagh Carpendale, “Visits: A Spatiotemporal Visualization of Location Histories,” Eurographics Conference on Visualization (2013): 80. https://diglib.eg.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10.2312/PE.EuroVisShort.EuroVisShort2013.079-083/079-083.pdf?sequence=1;James A. Muir and Paul C. Oorschot, “Internet Geolocation,” ACM Computing Surveys 42, no. 1 (2009): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1145/1592451.1592455.
[4] Mirzoeff, “The Right to Look,” 473.
[5] Mirzoeff, “The Right to Look,” 477.
[6] Shannon, Bond. “How Russia is Losing - and Winning - The Information War in Ukraine.” NPR, February 28, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1159712623/how-russia-is-losing-and-winning-the-information-war-in-ukraine
[7] Mirzoeff, "The Right to Look." Critical Inquiry, 474.
[8] Mirzoeff , "The Right to Look." Critical Inquiry, 477.
[9] “Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations,” (OHCHR and the Human Rights Center, 2022), 8.
[10] L.Ceci, “YouTube: Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute 2022,” Statista, March 22, 2023. https://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-uploaded-to-youtube-every-minute/
[11] Mega Wulandari,“Improving EFL Learners Speaking Proficiency Through Instagram Vlog.” LLT Journal: A Journal on Language and Language Teaching22, no. 1 (2019): 111-125. https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/LLT/article/view/1796/1447
[12] Xue Zhang, Hauke Fuehres, and Peter Gloor, “Predicting Stock Market Indicators Through Twitter ‘I hope it is not as bad as I fear.’” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 26,(2011): 55—62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.562
[13] Benjamin Guinaudeau, Kevin Munger, and Fabio Votta, “Fifteen Seconds of Fame: TikTok and the Supply Side of Social Video,” Computational Communication Research 4,no. 2(2022):463–85. https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/CCR2022.2.004.GUIN
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[21] Michael Foucault and Alan Sheridan, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 95.
[22] Safiya U. Noble, “Critical Surveillance Literacy in Social Media: Interrogating Black Death and Dying Online,” Black Camera 9, no. 2 (2018) 154. https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.9.2.10
[23] Safiya U. Noble, “Critical Surveillance Literacy in Social Media, “ 150.
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[25] “The Twitter Rules: Safety, Privacy, Authenticity, and More,” Twitter (Twitter), accessed April 28, 2023, https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules.
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[33] Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations,” 14.
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Riley Snowden
Riley Snowden is a graduating senior at The University of Tampa majoring in Communication and Media Studies. She presented her research on Open-Source Investigations at the 2023 Florida Undergraduate Research Conference at St Thomas University. In recognition of this work, she also won the Excellence in Civic Engagement Award at The University of Tampa. In her free time, Snowden is on the Active Minds Executive Board at The University of Tampa, which advocates for mental health awareness and suicide prevention.