The visual storytelling of war: Mobilizing Tatik and Papik

This article focuses on the visual storytelling of war by studying the ‘We Are Our Mountains’ monument-related narration on Instagram. I analysed 371 posts, their comments and fourteen interviews with Armenian content creators to examine multimodal wartime storytelling and to shed light on how aesthetics are deployed in different war stages. During war, the Armenian content creators framed (and experienced) the monument as ‘beautiful’ to boost morale and mobilize external audiences. Post-war, stories turned to ‘working through’ and ‘building-up’, with aesthetics used for in-group affinity. However, online storytelling also includes unintended audiences; Azerbaijani audiences inserted themselves into the shared stories, and contested the aesthetic value of the monument, thus further highlighting the relevance of aesthetics in war-related storytelling.