Dancing in uniform: Thirst trap propaganda in military image wars on TikTok

This paper examines the use of TikTok by female Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers as a tool for digital militarism and image warfare. Following the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, there was a surge in IDF soldiers posting ‘thirst trap’ videos, blending dance, seduction, and militarized imagery to humanize soldiers and amplify state narratives. Analysing 200 accounts and 500 videos, the study identifies a spectrum of different seduction strategies ranging from ‘cute’ soft power dynamics to the dramatization of eroticized brutality. The low-tier content features playful, non-militant aesthetics, while middle-tier content incorporates weapons and military settings to recontextualize platform trends and high-tier content involves explicit self-sexualization and provocative imagery. These videos exploit TikTok’s participatory affordances and algorithmic visibility to maximise engagement while trivialising violence across varying intensities. The paper further identifies a semi-automated computational propaganda campaign that repurposes authentic IDF content through personalised overlays to engage audiences, producing forms of participatory militainment. In doing so, these strategies collapse distinctions between the personal and the political, recasting propaganda as entertainment. The study underscores the urgent need for critical media literacy to understand how platform infrastructures actively shape conflict narratives in the era of post-digital warfare.