Boosting the distant Other: Visibility practices on Japanese Twitter during Russia’s war on Ukraine

This paper identifies the visibility practices of Japanese Twitter users supporting Ukraine during Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Studies of digital visibility often suggest that moral goals and ideals are not attainable in such practices, as they clash with conditions of visibility configured by social media. This has led scholars to suggest that moral paradoxes, or the need to reconcile conflicting considerations, are the main characteristic of visibility on social media platforms. In this study, through an innovative mixed-methods approach for analysing visibility practices, I also outline several moral paradoxes underlying practices through which Japanese Twitter users enhance or decrease the visibility of actors associated with Russia’s war on Ukraine. However, by adopting the conceptual approach of ‘ethics as practice’ which emphasises the moral considerations of practitioners when faced with a moral conundrum, I argue that users driven by the moral call to support Ukraine recognise the limitations of Twitter’s regime of visibility. Their grappling with the identified paradoxes as they engage in visibility practices is what gives moral value to these practices.