How does war look like on the European mainstream media Facebook? A large- N comparison of the media Facebook posts covering Ukraine and Gaza in 24 European countries in spring 2024

We combine AI-based visual content analysis data with large-scale topic modeling to examine the proportion of coverage and the visual construction of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in Facebook posts published by 51 top European media organizations between 25 February and 2 April 2024 ( N > 90,000 posts). This period coincides with the 2-year anniversary of the Russian invasion and overlaps with the sixth month of the war in Gaza. The analysis finds an imbalance in the volume of coverage allocated to the two wars, as well as war-specific visual framing devices, but also similarities in their portrayals. Ultimately, in both cases, the visualization of war creates a distance between the viewers and those affected on the ground.