All Eyes On Rafah
On the 26th of May, an Israeli airstrike hit a Palestinian refugee camp in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Described by the Israeli Prime Minister as a ‘tragic mishap’, the airstrike that was allegedly made to be a precision strike, mercilessly killed at least 45 innocent Palestinians and injured hundreds.
The airstrike caused fires to spread all across the camp injuring innocent people. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the strike had “killed scores of innocent civilians who were only seeking shelter from this deadly conflict”.
According to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, the death toll of innocent Palestinians since October 3rd now stands at roughly 36,000.
With this shocking tragedy, social media responded with the social movement ‘All Eyes On Rafah’, in which social media users say this to share their acknowledgement of the horrors that happened in Rafah.
‘All Eyes On Rafah’ was turned into a viral AI-generated image created by the Instagram handle of @shahv4012, in which this image consists of the words 'All Eyes On Rafah’ on top of deserted land with cubes surrounding it to replicate the refugee camps in Rafah.
This story, which had an ‘add to your story’ button linked to the bottom creates a convenient template for social media users to add the image to their own social media story.
This image went viral with 46 million people adding to their story in under 48hours of its original post.
This image includes thousands of cubes around the words to represent the tents in the refugee camp in Rafah, which seems to go on for miles as they touch the background of the mountains.
With this image going viral across the world, despite the previous lack of exposure of what was happening to Palestinians, there is an argument that this post carries a negative message.
Why could this image carry a negative message?
While having the words ‘All Eyes on Rafah’, the AI-generated image fails to be informative of the tragedy.
The real images taken of the tragedy in Rafah may seem too graphic for people to want to share on social media, as the harrowing images that have surfaced of the aftermath of the airstrike have been eye-opening and shocking.
This means that an AI generated image can be perceived as a safe option to use if wanting to raise awareness about the tragedy that happened in Rafah, leading to the possibility that it could be posted as a ‘safe bet’.
As well as this, the popularity of the AI generated image could also carry out the agenda that others reposted the template on their story to follow a mass trend.
As spoken about previously, real images of the airstrike aftermath were there to be shared, but the one that resonated with the world was a AI generated image.
