Putin's great "imperial challenge" in the invasion of Ukraine 9:03
Editor's Note
: Nicole Hemmer is a Research Associate at Columbia University in the Obama Presidency Oral History Project and the author of "Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics."
She hosts the history podcast "Past Present" and "This Day in Esoteric Political History" and is a co-producer of the podcast "Welcome To Your Fantasy."
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
See more opinion pieces on CNNe.com/opinion
(CNN) --
I was in the sixth grade of elementary school the first time I saw a war.
We had just installed cable TV in our home in rural Indiana, and after school my brother and I turned on CNN to see the sky over Baghdad filtered through night vision goggles, bathed in neon green that reminiscent of the glow sticks we used to wave at the skating rink.
Soon, our dinner conversations were peppered with talk of Scud missiles and General Norman Schwarzkopf (as Americans of German descent, we quickly mastered his name) as we told our parents about the dramatic scenes we saw while working.
Russia - Ukraine war: latest news and death toll of the invasion
My dad had little appetite for our reports.
A reluctant Vietnam veteran, he had experienced the first televised American war as a combatant, and had no desire in 1991 to see the bombs drop on Baghdad.
advertising
But my dad's experience was not the norm.
For most Americans, war has been a spectator event, watched in crowded theaters and quiet living rooms.
The invasion of Ukraine is no different.
Although the media has changed—the current war is played out not only on cable news, but also on TikTok and Twitter—the fact is the same: most of us consume wars rather than experience them.
Seeing war on screen is complicated.
Watching war can deepen our empathy, lead to more aid and philanthropy, and encourage pacifism.
But it can also be a source of manipulation, misinformation and even inertia.
So as we watch another war begin, we need to think carefully about how we consume it.
The notion of war as a spectator event did not begin with television or film.
Scheduled battles, with engagement dates known in advance, drew spectators to watch the fight.
That was the case with the first Battle of Bull Run of the US Civil War. Civilians, including several members of Congress, packed lunches and jars to witness the first fight of what was expected to be a short war.
But instead, they saw a chaotic and deadly crash that eventually sent viewers fleeing.
New technologies made it possible to watch the fighting from a safer distance.
Millions of Americans flocked to theaters to watch the news during both world wars.
These were social events, seeing war as an act of community and, once the US entered the wars, of solidarity and support.
But newsreels were also often propaganda efforts, first produced during World War I by the new film division of the Committee on Public Information.
His films used carefully edited war footage to increase public support.
Its successor during World War II, the Office of War Information, did the same,
The shift to televised warfare changed that dynamic.
As the Vietnam War escalated in the 1960s, the scenes played out in people's homes.
This was not the full coverage of modern cable news—scenes from the war were often packaged as part of the nightly news—but the footage of the fighting became part of the private rhythms of home life. , something to be consumed between dinner and "Gilligan's Island" episodes.
Cable news made 24-hour war coverage and information possible, and it turned out that the American public craved exactly that.
Although I didn't realize it when I was tuning in to the war after school, millions of Americans were doing the same thing, making CNN a household name and revolutionizing 24-hour news.
And all that viewing changed the war, too: By the mid-1990s, media scholars were regularly citing the "CNN effect" as a factor in foreign policy: the images on cable news shaped public opinion about the war. foreign intervention, affecting the range of options politicians could use when making war (or seeking peace).
Zelensky sends a message: We will defend our country 1:19
Seeing war has real power.
So the ability to control how it is covered, whether through edited newscasts, curated nightly news packages, or government policies, such as the 1991 military edict that prohibited the media from photographing soldiers' coffins, also has a role. royal power.
The rise of social media has not only changed the way we view war, but also the way that coverage is controlled.
Scroll through Twitter and you can see scenes filmed by civilians on the ground in Ukraine, whether it's a child screaming in terror of a nearby explosion or conflagration in the night sky, or a Ukrainian woman yelling at a Russian soldier.
But those rawer images are mixed with a flood of video misinformation, particularly prevalent on TikTok, where videos from other times and places are relabeled as live coverage from Ukraine.
That kind of misinformation is not new, of course.
Misleading propaganda is a staple of modern warfare that has been adapted to new technologies.
During the 2011 Syrian uprising, for example, US readers were captivated by the blog "A Gay Girl in Damascus," which focused on the regime's brutal crackdowns.
But within a few months, the blog writer was declared an American.
As the invasion of Ukraine unfolds, these experiences should inform how we consume this terrible war.
First of all, we must be assiduously careful with our news sources;
the more shocking the scene, the more thorough we need to be to make sure it's real and accurate.
We should also think about what we're not seeing: the people, experiences, and events hidden from public view.
Beyond that, we must tune in to our emotional response to those scenes and be aware of what the stories we consume are asking of us.
Scrolling through an avalanche of harrowing images can inspire us or bore us, it can turn us into saber-raters or pacifists.
Or it can simply provide a sense of drama and catharsis, at the risk of mixing with all the other media we consume and making war seem like fiction.
As we watch this conflict unfold on screen, Americans must commit to developing their own ethic of war and fostering a deeper understanding of the geopolitics of this region and its relationship to ours.
Otherwise, the emotions aroused by the observation of these images are a breeding ground for manipulation.
And that's why, as scenes of war flood us, we need to make sure we're not just consuming war, but thinking deeply about what it means.
Conflict Russia - Ukraine