Paper short abstract:

This paper centers the materiality of ICT in Gaza and the aesthetics of images circulated from Gaza to the Global North during the 2014 Gaza Massacre to think through levels of mediation (actor, device, network, and platform) regarding online activism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to bring together digital studies and postcolonial studies in an inquiry of Palestinian information and communication technologies. Centering images of the 2014 Gaza Massacre or Operation Protective Edge, this paper parses through debates within pro-Palestine and Palestinian diaspora debates regarding ethical solidarity activism-- particularly whether circulating images of death on Facebook and Tumblr is an effective strategy of awareness-building-- within the context of Israeli occupation and cyber-colonialism, as coined by Helga Tawil-Souri and Miriyam Aouragh. Interrogating both the message and the medium in the spirit of Marshall McLuhan reorients debates regarding the dissemination of death and devastation online to think through ICT and new media as products of multiple colonialisms and sites where power and ideology are contested. This paper aims to theorize strategies of pro-Palestine activism beyond the assertion of Palestinian humanity inserted into a discourse network complicit in colonialism by employing an aesthetic analysis of the materiality of the digital.