The image shows a huge camp for displaced people seen from the sky, with tents lining up as far as the eye can see, in a vast desert ringed by mountains. In the middle, a message in capital letters: "All Eyes on Rafah." This image, likely generated by artificial intelligence (AI), has been massively shared on social media since the Israeli army's deadly bombardment of a camp for displaced people in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, on Sunday, May 26. The model post, shareable with a click, has been attributed to the Instagram account shashv4012, which has also created similar images about other conflicts.
Laurence Allard, a lecturer in communication sciences and researcher at Sorbonne-Nouvelle University and member of the Institut de Recherche sur le Cinéma et l'Audiovisuel (a research institute on cinema and the audiovisual sector), speaks to Le Monde about the question this image raises.
This image has been shared 47 million times in support of Palestinians, but when you think about it, it's pretty shocking. It works so well because it's a smooth, polished image, with a soft palette, like an advert for summer camp. It represents the exact opposite of the state of Rafah.
The artificial intelligence that built this image saw the blood and the victims and reconstructed the camp, cleaned it up. It looks like a visual hallucination: "All eyes are on Rafah," but no eyes have actually seen it. That's the paradox of it: We want to show solidarity with an image where there is nothing. It's also very smooth and so can get through all algorithmic censors. People are expressing their support with an image that represents nothing − but it's also perhaps because it shows nothing that it's so widely shared.
This image is an example of "clicktivism": In other words, sharing something with a click and a vague comment, but there's zero engagement. We share a slogan and an accompanying image without necessarily thinking about it. It's a minimal commitment through which we performatively show compassion.
This is the automation of thought, opinion and emotion. It's an exceptional situation, which makes it an exceptional image, but also a highly paradoxical one. We're being asked to look at an image that tells us nothing, even though it could be a way to access the truth.
The image is mobilizing; it's a way of participating in a global conversation, a kind of robotic activism. Many influencers share it because it fits in with their extremely controlled aesthetic. The smooth image fits perfectly with this very ideologically sanitized world. It's an advertising image, not a political symbol. Sharing it makes it even more visible, bringing this resonating slogan back over and over again.
Mass sharing, and especially influencers sharing something, can inform people about the situation, but in this case there's no information. So this hypervisibilization actually has an invisibilizing effect, because this image is not Rafah.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.