"In her book 'Regarding the Pain of Others,' from 2003, Susan Sontag tracked the evolution of war journalism from photography to television."

"The Spanish Civil War marked the emergence of the professionalized photojournalist, equipped with a Leica 35-mm. film camera to capture the conflict on the ground. The Vietnam War was the first war to be televised, and it made the carnage in conflict zones 'a routine ingredient of the ceaseless flow of domestic, small-screen entertainment,' Sontag wrote. Now the small screens are our phones.... For Sontag, photographs had a 'deeper bite' than video when it came to documenting war. A single image taken on the ground could endure for generations, like Robert Capa’s Spanish Civil War photograph 'The Falling Soldier.' Social-media documentation is less likely to last—it’s ephemeral by design.... As Sontag wrote, 'Photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses. A call for peace. A cry for revenge. Or simply the bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic information, that terrible things happen.'... The flood of TikTok videos is perhaps more likely to evoke our bemused awareness.... Yet... traditional news organizations are pulling their journalists to safety. Social media is an imperfect chronicler of wartime. In some cases, it may also be the most reliable source we have."

From "Watching the World’s 'First TikTok War'/Social media’s aesthetic norms are shaping how Ukrainians document the Russian invasion. Is it a new form of citizen war journalism or just an invitation to keep clicking?" by Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker).

You can see TikTok's Ukraine videos at #ukraine.