Digital/Visual Archives of War and Conflict (2025-2026)
The widespread adoption of smartphones has precipitated a new era of digital witnessing and accountability. Open-source (OSINT) investigators, human rights workers and legal bodies across the globe analyze this digital documentation of violence, including satellite and social images, to reconstruct wartime events in places like Gaza and the Ukraine, immigration enforcement operations in the US and consider legal implications of this material.
This project team investigated how visual media record and shape narratives of war and conflict while learning best practices in social media data collection, visual analysis, archival practice and OSINT methods. Taking into consideration how online media can function both as an archive and as a tool for accountability, team members examined how digital evidence is gathered, verified and mobilized in investigations of human rights abuses and potential war crimes. In dialogue with scholars, artists and activists working with conflict archives, the team applied these approaches to develop independent projects. Team members curated digital collections, produced essays for publication and created projects that reflected on the ethical handling of sensitive material, the challenges posed by misinformation and AI‑generated imagery and the evolving legal and evidentiary status of video in debates about memory, representation and justice.
Timing
Fall 2025 – Summer 2026
Outputs
Digital/Visual Archives of War and Conflict (Interactive display at the Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, April 15, 2026)
Visual Archives of War: The Politics and Legality of Digital Witnessing (Team profile)
Student papers and projects written and submitted to public facing journals
Application to attend summer conference (Pending)
Rebecca Stein funded for external fellowship at the National Humanities Center for project inspired by project team work
This Team in the News
Faculty Perspective: Rebecca Stein
See earlier related team, War and Digital Archives: The Israel-Gaza War and Beyond (2024-2025).