From news photos of body-strewn battlefields during the Civil War to the television broadcast of U.S. Marines burning a village in Vietnam, war images have shocked the public and revealed the gruesome realities behind the old adage that “war is hell.”

Today, war images are no longer the sole domain of traditional news organizations that have decided what to show and when to hold back. Now, unfiltered scenes of war flood social media, uploaded by citizens with smartphones.

Nowhere is this shift more visible than in Gaza. Over two years of war, Gazan citizens and journalists have streamed photos and videos of bombed-out buildings, mangled bodies and starving children with protruding ribs and hollowed faces on sites like TikTok, X and Instagram.

For viewers, the images provide a real-time

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