The first photo I posted to Instagram in 2015 was of three paint canvases depicting suburban scenes in odd fluorescent greens and blues. The caption simply read “R. Michael Wommack,” the artist’s name. I have since posted 482 times and, for the most part, my feed and the feeds of those I follow are trivial. In the wake of last summer’s Black Lives Matters protests, however, Instagram’s tone seems to have shifted. A platform where we once posted photos of our pets, oversaturated by the old-school Nashville filter, has become a medium where the “Instagram Infographic Complex” has taken root. These infographics, geared to educate users on topics ranging from climate change to personal finance to prison abolition and beyond, are oftentimes brightly colored, text-packed, multi-page slideshows–the seemingly perfect combination of aesthetic and useful.
As a 20-something-year-old, left-leaning, college-educated American who follows and is followed by similarly-minded and positioned friends and acquaintances, my personal Instagram feed and Instagram Story lineup is flooded with these infographics. Ostensibly, sharing these posts signals that the person posting has educated themselves on a given topic, and it creates opportunities for others to do the same. In recent days, many new infographics have been made in response to the attempted eviction of Palestinian families by Israeli settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. These posts focus on the escalation in use of violent force by the Israel Defense Force and far-right settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and elsewhere in the occupied territories. Some infographics urge folks to contact their representatives and solicit donations, others try to distill the conflict and its history down to a few pages of digestible facts and “things to know,” and yet others are devastating news reports of Palestinian civilians being killed.
While I myself have shared a number of posts about the conflict, I’ve increasingly struggled to place the violent and upsetting images of the ethnic cleansing and endless persecution of Palestinians amidst the largely mindless posts that are otherwise favored by Instagram’s algorithm. The platform itself is dominated by celebrities, influencers, food blogs, and reposted Tik Toks in the form of “reels.” Amidst these posts persist infographics highlighting devastating events and news, oftentimes lacking context and frequently portraying the faces of people unlikely to ever know their images have been consumed. On a platform as vapid as Instagram, the utility of these infographics on their own is limited, and the pressure to share these posts without serious commitments to act on the information learned is an act of moral posturing.
A frankly bizarre example of this pressure is the recent condemnation of producer and singer DJ Khaled, himself Palestinian. Some fans have criticized him for what they perceive to be his silence on what is happening in the region, given his identity. The outrage over his lack of posting about the situation is so loud that the question of what exactly the “We the Best Singer” could possibly add to the discourse is almost completely drowned out. A majority of comments on his recent Instagram posts simply ask him why he hasn’t commented, along with Palestinian flag emojis and #FreePalestine hashtags. Nowhere do commenters supply targeted insights on how DJ Khaled can actually help. At best, celebrities may use their massive followings to access and influence millions of users at a time. An example is Bella Hadid, also of Palestinian origin, who continues to use her platform to share not just infographics, but materials that direct her followers to donation campaigns. At worst, celebrities refuse to take a side at all (“All Lives Matter!” “It’s too complicated!”), or instead argue for vague notions of “peace,” as actress Jameela Jamil recently did on her Twitter account.
Of course, neither Bella Hadid nor DJ Khaled represent the average Instagram user. For most, the visibility of their posts depends on the algorithms, followers, and promotions by other, larger accounts. In the case of activists and on-the-ground organizers, obtaining a platform to share important and oftentimes underreported news is not just about gaining followers and views; it is vital to their work, sometimes at the expense of their own personal safety. An example is the account of writer Mohammed el Kurd, who posts from occupied Palestine about occupied Palestine. In the case of his account and others like it, the act of posting is irrefutably an act of activism, protest, and resistance because of his first-hand knowledge of events and the genuine risks he takes in publicizing it. Most importantly, accounts of indigenous Palestinians documenting the abhorrent and blatant human right abuses by the Israeli state serve as perhaps the only digital record of a settler-colonial project that has been largely ignored for decades. The question remains: what do the rest of us add with our compulsive re-shares and posts without sustainable or serious commitments to the cause?
The most compelling answer is that sharing and spreading awareness in the form of infographics creates a shared archive of events as they unfold. In the book “Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East,” Anthony Downey describes the traditional form of an archive as inward-facing, built to collect and keep material stably and securely. An outward-facing archive, in comparison, is more in line with film archivist Henri Langlois’ depiction of archiving as a process “based on diffusion, not consolidation.” The term diffusion refers to the distribution and ongoing circulation of archival material, and would presumably encompass the Instagram Infographic Complex as a medium. Downey argues that the ease of reproducing and sharing material on the Internet allows it to serve as a platform for outward-facing digital archives.
In his “Archive Fever,” Jacques Derrida expands on the notion of outward-facing archives, writing that the experience and use of technology catalyzes the moment of archivalization because the archive begins the “very instant [of] having written something or other on the screen.” Perhaps not every digital reproduction of an experience is intrinsically archivalization, but the simplicity and accessibility of the interaction between a screen and an event has arguably precipitated the rise of the Instagram infographics. It is easy to feel a part of history when all one has to do is click a few buttons and share a post on their feed or in their story. It dulls a sense of helplessness and answers the urgency of questions such as “Why is no one talking about this?” and “Why isn’t mainstream media giving this more coverage?”
However, it cannot and should not be ignored that most of our contributions in the form of resharing posts are inherently temporary. Instagram stories last at most for 24 hours; most posts are scrolled past and forgotten. The outward-facing digital archive is unstable and susceptible to the whims of big tech companies such as Facebook, which owns Instagram, and in recent days has censored posts about what is happening in Palestine. It is ultimately very easy to share a post, write a caption, and take a side when the commitment to these causes is temporary. It is convenient to reduce suffering and global injustice into a few pages of informational text. It is inconvenient to confront one’s own position of privilege and think of how to leverage this privilege to make tangible changes.
Before you post, ask yourself: have I done something productive with the information that I learned and am about to share? Have I taken some action that betters the lives and material conditions of those affected by the contents of the infographic? Does this infographic include action items? If not, have I identified them myself and donated to a mutual aid fund/ signed a petition/ written to a representative/ made plans to attend a protest/ etc.? Have I done my own reading on the topic and learned more beyond a few slides of text on Instagram? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then ask yourself: why am I really sharing this post?
Of course, as one widely shared Instagram post acknowledges, the liberation of Palestinians has long been a taboo subject in America and elsewhere, and thus the recent surge of solidarity and visibility on social media is a cause for celebration. Further, a recent Israeli airstrike leveled a building that once housed media outlets such as the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, elevating the role of social media in dispersing news and real-time events. However, we must raise the bar for how we show solidarity beyond a “proof-of-share” on Instagram, as this is the minimum we can do. The death and destruction of a people should not so carelessly be used as fodder on the Instagram feeds of people who otherwise remain uninvolved or uncommitted to the emancipation of the oppressed. The moral outrage we feel as witnesses to global acts of violence and persecution is entirely justifiable. However, the pain and anguish inflicted by settler-colonial entities such as Israel and the U.S. is not a spectator sport, and we don’t get awarded ribbons just for participating a la our Instagram accounts.
Ultimately, if our commitment as Instagram users is truly to solidarity and allyship, then we must strive for permanence and longevity in our actions. Museums would be empty if every contribution made had a 24-hour lifespan. As activists continue to turn to social media as a medium through which they can mobilize and organize people, we, as users, must respond to their efforts in kind by outsizing our individual impact via personal and tangible commitments to change. We must move past virtue signaling through shares and actually engage with like-minded users in the real world to work towards collective action. Social media is certainly a tool for educating oneself, but it is purely a means and cannot be an end. Palestinians have been systematically denied liberation for over 70 years now while the world silently watched. The violence of the past few days is just a fraction of what they’ve had to endure. To truly stand in solidarity with Palestine, we must be proactive and safeguard against relapse to silence once the ongoing occupation is no longer a trending topic on our feeds.
Noora Reffat
Noora Reffat is an Egyptian-American born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a Master of Public Health in infectious disease epidemiology, both from Yale University. Her research predominantly focuses on resistance —antimicrobial and otherwise.
