Emotions and war on YouTube: affective investments in RT’s visual narratives of the conflict in Syria

Abstract Recent scholarship claims that narratives and images of war have political effects, not simply because of their content and ‘form’, but because of their affective and emotional ‘forces’. Yet, International Relations scholars rarely explore how audiences respond to narratives and images of war in their research. Addressing this gap, this paper combines discourse analysis of RT (formerly Russia Today) ‘breaking news’ YouTube videos of Russian military intervention in Syria with analysis of 750 comments and social media interactions on those videos. Our findings demonstrate how RT layers moral and legal justifications for Russian intervention in multiple audio-visual formats, within a visual narrative of the conflict that relies on affective representations of key actors and events. Viewers largely approve of the content, replicate its core narratives and express emotions coherent with RT’s affective representation of the Syrian conflict. Audiences’ responses to these narratives and images of war were shaped by their affective investments in the identities and events portrayed on-screen. These affective investments are therefore crucial in understanding the political significance of images of armed conflict.

摘要：近期的学术研究声称，战争的叙事和图像具有政治影响，这不仅是因为其内容和“形式”，还因为其情感上的“力量”。然而，国际关系学者在其研究中很少探究受众对战争叙事和图像的反应。为弥补这一差距，本文结合对今日俄罗斯电视台（RT，原名Russia Today）在YouTube上有关俄罗斯军事干预叙利亚的“突发新闻”视频的话语分析，以及对这些视频的750条评论和社交媒体互动的分析。我们的研究结果表明，今日俄罗斯电视台如何以多种视听形式为俄罗斯的干预提供道德和法律上的正当理由，在依赖对关键行为体和事件的情感化呈现的冲突视觉叙事中。观众在很大程度上认可其内容，重复其核心叙事，并表达出与今日俄罗斯电视台对叙利亚冲突的情感化呈现相一致的情感。受众对这些战争叙事和图像的反应是由他们对屏幕上所描绘的身份和事件的情感投入所塑造的。因此，这些情感投入对于理解武装冲突图像的政治意义至关重要。