Jamming the genocide: The ethics of visual media, social platforms and resistance in Gaza

This study examines the role of visual media in disrupting the genocide in Gaza through a cultural jamming framework and a critical visual rhetoric lens. Drawing from visual imagery that circulated on X between November 2023 and June 2024, the study employs a critical thematic analysis to analyse imagery and political cartoons shared after 7 October 2023. The analysis focuses on how users employed visual remixing, symbolism and satire to challenge dominant narratives, reveal hypocrisy and resist censorship in digital spaces. The analysis identifies four key themes: symbolism and visual resistance; US and global complicity; media bias and censorship; leadership and legitimacy. These themes reveal that visual media operates as both a site of political resistance and erasure, transforming witnessing and grief into acts of digital solidarity and counter-hegemonic expression. The study contributes to scholarship on digital activism, visual communication, and media by bridging cultural jamming and critical visual rhetoric. It demonstrates how visual media reclaims representational power, challenges hegemonic structures of visibility and reframes the politics of seeing within global communication on Palestine.