The recent murders of Minneapolis residents Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good are drawing renewed attention to the activities of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

While they are not the only people to have been killed by ICE agents, first-hand videos of the events of their death have made us all witness to the extreme violence being carried out in the US.

Multiple versions of the footage went viral globally, capturing the world’s palpable sense of injustice. These videos demonstrate how mobile media is transforming each of us into a new kind of witness to suffering.

We need to find new ways to process such collective trauma and channel it toward meaningful action.

Every day, we are exposed to loss, grief and death through our mobile phones. The distance between the participant and the observer – between the mourner and the witness – collapses. This is what scholars call “affective witnessing”. The rise of social media, body cam technology and surveillance media have all driven this phenomenon.

As we watch viral footage of tragic events, the boundaries between the emotions of the recording witness and our own merge. We feel their grief in our bodies, and become witnesses by extension.

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