Images of War: Digital Media and the Experience of Conflict

From large-scale armed conflicts to localized, asymmetric violence, war is increasingly experienced through images that circulate across digital platforms, news feeds, and mobile devices. These communicative ecosystems are significantly shaped by algorithmic automation, livestreaming, drone technology, and AI-enabled systems for the generation and manipulation of images. As a result, conflicts often reach publics primarily through mediated visual flows that shape how wars are perceived, discussed, and interpreted.This Research Topic invites a critical discussion of the modes through which images of war are generated, propagated, and received in media environments. The circulation, framing, and modulation of conflict imagery contribute to shaping public opinion, policy debates, geopolitical alignments, and strategic communication practices. Media rhythms and narrative density do not merely affect perception; they can also play a role in processes of political decision-making, legitimacy construction, and the governance of information in times of conflict.In its passage onto the screen, war may lose the status of the isolated event and assume that of a persistent background, integrated into the rhythms of communication and everyday experience. Temporal patterns of image consumption, together with the circulation of heterogeneous visual materials, contribute to shaping the perceptual, cognitive, affective, and normative experience of conflict.At the same time, the experience of war remains profoundly asymmetrical. Conflicts are experienced differently by those who observe them through screens, those who participate in them directly, and civilians whose everyday environments become sites of conflict. Digital media increasingly blur the boundaries between these perspectives through the circulation of images, testimonies, and other forms of user-generated content, raising new questions about visibility, witnessing, and the mediated experience of violence.The Research Topic welcomes theoretical, empirical, and interdisciplinary contributions. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:• the modes of reception of war images in media environments• narrative density and overlap in contemporary communicative flows• the role of media rhythms and algorithmic automation in shaping the experience of conflict• drones, livestreaming, artificial intelligence, and deepfakes in the production and circulation of war images• the formation and transformation of war imaginaries• shock, saturation, and interference as dynamics of reception• propaganda, strategic communication, symbolic conflict, and cognitive warfare• digital testimony and bottom-up production of war images• ethical and political issues related to the visibility, manipulation, and circulation of images• historical and comparative perspectives on regimes of war reception• the impact of war imagery on public opinion and democratic processes• governance of information, platform power, and regulation in wartime contexts• strategic narratives and geopolitical competition in digital media environments. Topic editors: Tito Vagni, Federico Tarquini, Antonio Rafele Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78913/images-of-war-digital-media-and-the-experience-of-conflict