When the war strikes back: TikTok’s domestication of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict among youth

This article explores how the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is represented through videos circulating on TikTok and how the consumption of this content impacts young people’s imaginary of war. After 2 years since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the centrality of TikTok in the communication around this conflict has become apparent. In this study, we are interested in the ‘domesticating’ effect produced by the circulation and consumption of content circulated on TikTok and the effects this may have on young people – the larger segment of the platform’s user base. Using insights from the qualitative analysis of 826 TikTok videos and 2 focus groups conducted with Italian high school students, we found that TikTok contributes to the domestication of war through 3 narrative strategies: the spectacularization of the technical aspects of war, the representation of war as part of the everyday life, and various affordance-mediated attempts of aestheticization. The representations of the conflict vehiculated through TikTok videos make war something familiar and normalized in the eyes of our interviewees. The idea of a war in the near future as something that may realistically happen strongly emerge from the focus groups, alongside with different ways to cope with this idea.