How AR Can Be Used to Skyrocket Awareness of a War
You can use augmented reality to support a humanitarian cause
It’s been over a month that the bitter, bloody war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh — Artsakh goes on and while most big international media channels have covered it in one way or another, the international community is silent.
For the most part, this silence has its diplomatic or interest-related reasons, but on the other part, the silence is immense because, despite the efforts from both sides to make the world speak up, so many people from around the world don’t even know what these countries fight for, or even that there is a war going on at all.
In our digital era, the war in the battlefield is back up by informational warfare (IW), the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology in pursuit of a competitive advantage over the opponent. And it’s not a secret that IW can be a powerful weapon to aid the efforts of diplomats and, eventually, the soldiers on the frontline.
Thus, among all the possible options of IW, Armenians use AR to raise awareness of the life and death struggle on their frontline.
ARLOOPA (an Armenian AR development company) has developed war-related AR hashtags in its ARLOOPA app which can be accessed from anywhere around the world.
The AR hashtags come in the form of 3D models that you can add to any place due to location-based AR functionality.
For instance, you can place the now popular #ArtsakhStrong hashtag, say, in front of the White House or on the London Bridge, take a photo or video right from the app and share on social media.
Chances are that your international friends who see the hashtag for the first time, would google it to see what’s it all about. They will then come up with huge amounts of information regarding the issue and will be able to educate themselves about the conflict that takes away so many lives.
They can then decide which side to support and, hopefully, help raise awareness among their own friends and followers.
To use the AR hashtags, all you need to do is:
- Download the ARLOOPA app for iOS or Android.
- Go to the “Join the Cause” category.
Choose a hashtag and hold your mobile device up. The camera will open and the hashtag you chose will appear in your view.
You can use your fingers to adjust its position, then take a photo, video or GIF and share on social networks.
ARLOOPA also created an AR demonstration of the opponent’s loses which is regularly being updated, as there are opinions that the opponent covers up their loses.
The company has also used AR to “activate” the CNN logo and place content on it as part of their protest against CNN’s silence. You can view this content by scanning the CNN logo with the ARLOOPA app.
AR makes it easy to raise awareness about global issues in a visual and impactful way. And, it’s almost effortless, empowering you to make your quick contribution into an important humanitarian cause.
After all, we’ve cared about Notre Dame de Paris when it was burning, we’ve cared about BLM when it was hot and needed attention, we’ve cared about Syria when it was in war and now we should care at least about the lives of the innocent children who die because of the horrific war in that small, beautiful and proud place nested in the mountains.
Don’t be indifferent. Indifference costs lives.