Thank you for the shoutout, Ben! 🫶

Thank you, friend!! 💖🫶

Thank you my dear friend! 😍🫶

Beautiful, my friend! 😍

We’ve poured much care into crafting this piece; please read and share! See full paper below 👇 Thank you, Julie Yujie Chen, @grohmannrafael.bsky.social, Andrea Pollio, @cheryllsoriano.bsky.social, and @nielsvdoorn.bsky.social for being such a home for us! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We argue war influencers matter because they (1) fill the void left by mainstream journalism, (2) democratize conflict communication, (3) build bottom-up epistemologies, (4) reshape how war is seen, felt, and known by young ppl & (5) blur witnessing with performance, raising urgent ethical stakes👇

🔎 Using ethnographic lens, we analyzed 97 TikTok videos from Ukrainian (🇺🇦) creators, identifying three styles of war communication: POV Storytelling - intimate war testimonies; Memetic Remixing - war + trending memes; Playful Politainment - using LIVE, humor, and performance to fundraise & mobilize👇

To make sense of war influencers, we draw from three key traditions: 📸 War Photography - the long legacy of visualizing suffering, ✊ Citizen Journalism - real-time, mobile, from-the-ground truth-telling, 🔉 Creator & Platform Studies - platform vernaculars, algorithmic fluency, and visibility labor👇

We dive into *user-war influencers* and read them as content creators embedded in conflict zones who document, narrate, and aestheticize their experiences through platform-native vernaculars. They don’t monetize for profit, but for their authoritative voice in shaping public discourse👇