The wide availability of cheap drones and ruggedised cameras has given us new angles on war – and fuelled propaganda.
When Hamas terrorists spread out from the Gaza strip to attack Israeli towns and kibbutzes on October 7, many of them were wearing video cameras. Footage they took of the resulting massacre was destined to be used in Hamas propaganda videos to glorify the killing of Jews. But the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) also took the cameras from the terrorists they’d killed, and published clips of the footage to illustrate the brutality of the attacks, in which 1400 were murdered. The footage, and clips taken from security cameras in the towns, was used to justify the invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas.
A couple of weeks ago, as the IDF was bombarding Gaza in preparation for the ground invasion, a live-stream video of Gaza popped up in my YouTube feed. I forgot it was running on my computer and started a work Zoom call only for the IDF to ramp up the bombing blitz. “Is that thunder?” a colleague on the call asked. “No,” I said sheepishly, that’s the Israelis bombing Gaza, right as we speak.”
It was the first Gulf War, with Riverton-born Peter Arnett, the only Western journalist left in Baghdad, broadcasting from the top of a hotel, that cemented the expectation that CNN, the BCC, and later Al Jazeera and RT would broadcast major conflicts 24-7.
But the rise of the Go-Pro, a fairly expensive ruggedised camera, and dozens of cheaper clones, has recently added a visceral new DIY element to war coverage.
Terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and Isis recorded their exploits and posting them online for propaganda purposes. But you typically needed to go to the dark corners of the web to find their footage. Now, it’s relatively easy to stumble across video clips from theUkrainian-Russian and Gaza-Israel conflicts as you browse social media platforms X, TikTok, Facebook or YouTube. Usually, the most graphic bits are blurred out – but not always. X, in particular, has come under fire for allowing gory images and videos to circulate, in what is seen as a wholesale failure of its content moderation since Elon Musk bought the company formerly known as Twitter and slashed 75% of its workforce.
As political science researcher Colin Henry told the Washington Post recently, “It’s like there are suddenly many more movie theatres in town, and some of them are much more friendly towards snuff films.”
There’s an entire industry devoted to repackaging videos from military sources, usually edited to make one side in the conflict appear brutal or cowardly; the other heroic and virtuous. Outlets like the UK Sun rack up huge viewing numbers on YouTube with clips from Ukraine, subtitled with commentary. The source most of the time is the Ukrainian army.
A recent clip from the frontline in Ukraine went viral, showing drone footage of a Russian soldier pleading for his life as he is chased by consumer-grade DJI drones carrying grenades. Gesturing to the drone operator that he wishes to surrender, the soldier is dropped a note by the drone, telling him to cross the battlefield to Ukrainian lines.
The soldier, later identified as Anitin, was given safe passage by the Ukrainians. He later told the Wall Street Journal from a detention centre that his Russian commander had threatened him with death if he retreated from the conflict. An historic moment caught on camera? Or a masterstroke in information war by the Ukrainians? In this new, highly visual era of misinformation, it’s hard to know.
Keep your eyes open. The slick drone and GoPro footage rarely tells the full story.
