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Modern wars are no longer fought only on the battlefield - they also unfold on social media. Modern conflicts no longer play out solely between opposing forces, but in real time before a global audience that can watch, comment on, share and amplify events as they happen.

As public participation in conflict increasingly occurs through social media, the way wars are perceived, and even conducted, is rapidly changing. Influence, visibility and narrative now matter as much as military capability, especially for non‑state groups facing far more powerful adversaries.

PhD student Karoline Thomsen is examining how these online dynamics are reshaping both modern conflicts and the public perceptions surrounding them, revealing how social media has become a key battleground in its own right.

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How does social media allow weaker armed groups to compensate for fighting against a much stronger and well-resourced enemy in modern conflicts?

Such imbalance is known as asymmetric conflict and it describes a war between parties with vastly unequal power, resources, and capabilities. A clear contemporary example can be seen in conflicts such as the Israel–Hamas war.

Because of this asymmetry between the parties, the non-traditional methods of waging conflict become even more important avenues to winning it. It’s not new that media is used deliberately during war; I think most people can easily visualise some World War II propaganda, for example, but it is new that people outside of the conflict can interact with the content on social media.

During the Arab Spring, where we also saw a lot of asymmetric conflicts between states and non-state armed groups, social media usage was credited with drawing the world’s attention to the conflicts. That mechanism is well-established and is here to stay. Winning the narrative of the war has become part of winning the war itself, particularly for actors who cannot win militarily.

In what ways has social media itself become a battleground during conflicts?

Social media has become a battleground during conflicts in three main ways.

1. Firstly, it is an avenue to spread one’s own narrative about the conflict.Ìý
2. Secondly, it is a way to build local and global support around one’s narrative and cause.Ìý
3. Thirdly, it is also an avenue for the opposing actor to gauge the public sentiment around their opponent as well as sow disinformation.

Succeeding at all three, so persuading a strong, global base, beyond enemy lines, that your narrative around the conflict is correct, is an increasingly important part of winning a war. This forms part of the information warfare space.

Information warfare is a broad battlefield, because it’s about competing on narratives to gain advantages. It is not a regulated form of warfare like kinetic warfare is. ÌýPart of this is because it’s very difficult to pinpoint exactly where a point of view stops being a difference of opinion, to becoming a dangerous point of view, to becoming a scene of conflict that needs to be won.

Social media does two things that most other media forms do not. It connects the parties to the conflict with a global audience not in or even near the conflict, and it makes it so that these people can participate in the spread of conflict narratives. This invites a set of legal and political questions; like if this activity brings the laws of war online, or if social media users are protected by human rights law.

What legal grey areas does social media create in wartime, especially around incitement, propaganda, targeting or accountability?

Social media creates all sorts of legal grey areas. Using social media already means operating in a murky legal space, because it involves global companies, local regulations, and users interacting with content across different countries. War only exacerbates this issue.

It is often unclear where the line lies: when does sharing content become propaganda, incitement, or participation in a conflict, and which laws apply when that content crosses borders? These unresolved questions are a major driver of my research.

For armed groups and states to win the narrative, they feel pressure to be present across multiple platforms, paying attention to where their opponents are active. While I focus mainly on interactive platforms like X, Instagram and Facebook, any space where users can engage with conflict-related content can become part of the information battlefield, .

What have you discovered so far in your PhD research about how social media shapes modern asymmetric conflicts?

One of my major findings of my Ph.D. research is that social media enlarges modern asymmetric conflicts. It makes people from all over the world not just aware of conflicts going on, like the TV media did with the Vietnam War, but engage very directly with them because the conflict is presented side-by-side with beauty ads and updates from friends and family; making it normal to engage with big conflicts as an everyday phenomenon. This is probably not news to the average social media user, but how this social media feed impacts the conduct of war and rights for users on the other end is a question I’m keen to research further.

What are you aiming to uncover through your research, and why is it important right now?

Through my research, I’m aiming to uncover how conflicts and perceptions change as a result of the broader, public participation in them on social media.

Just think about how many posts related to the war in Gaza the average TikTok, Instagram and Facebook user sees in a day, and has for more than two years. That could be content shared by hundreds of people, almost like a digital version of the rumour mill, but with political opinion being shaped along the way.

At the moment, we don’t know a whole lot about how this interaction with conflict content on social media and it’s my hypothesis that interacting with these messages has a big impact, both on the message that is transmitted and also in the public opinion. Some of it might even be unlawful under the laws of war but permissible under human rights law – what applies then, if you’re in Australia sharing content that originates from a war zone? The tech companies don’t have the answer; and even if they did, it’s unclear if they have the legal responsibility for what kind of content is available where. This already murky picture becomes messier still when we add in AI – if content generated by AI is re-shared and interacted with hundreds of times, maybe even further modified, then who is responsible and accountable for those shifts in public perception? It is a fascinating research area, right at the intersection of war, social media, international law and domestic politics, with so many questions to keep me busy.

I’m examining the war in Gaza as a case study, which I think underscores the relevance of this research area: Everyone daily interacts with conflict-content; and unless humanity stops fighting wars or stops using social media, that will not change. So we have to learn what happens to the narrative when we do that, and use that to contribute to peace.ÌýÌý