Gore content and refigured ethics

This article examines ‘Gore Content’—online photos and videos of wounded, mutilated and dead bodies—through the lens of a refigured ethics that emerges between modern moral order and postmodern ambivalence. Drawing on an ongoing digital ethnography, it traces how smartphone capture, platform architectures and algorithmic circulation have normalised the availability of lethal imagery while fragmenting moral authority across fields such as journalism, law, activism, and vernacular online publics. Building on Bauman’s account of postmodern ethics and sociological notions of refiguration, the article argues that contemporary moral evaluations of gore oscillate between two tendencies: a politics of visibility that mobilises violent images as evidence and critique and a normalisation of suffering that shifts spectatorship towards shock, provocation, or affective play. Case vignettes—from cartel execution videos and ‘Narco blogs’ to platform moderation workarounds and algorithmic misfires—show how ethical frames are no longer centrally imposed but situationally negotiated, producing unresolved tensions around authenticity, legitimacy and responsibility. The article thus reframes Gore Content as a privileged site to observe how moral logics are overlaid, contested, and pragmatically coordinated in networked media.