The blogs of war: narrating the Afghanistan and Iraq wars

The blogs of war: narrating the Afghanistan and Iraq wars

The post 2001 'War(s) on Terror' have seen changes to the manner in which war is communicated, and this offers opportunities to those writing the social history of war. These events reflect the contemporary realities of war and communication. Borderlands of scholarship have opened and the community of those at/of war can now be more openly engaged and interrogated by the scholarly community. Past conflicts have been marked by the contest between official government representations of reality and the image presented by the mainstream media. This dual dominance is increasingly challenged by virtual individuals, a challenge that provides scholars fresh space to engage with a community that is too often excluded. Social media offers a remarkable degree of access for scholars to complement official reports and mainstream media accounts of war. This paper explores these areas of scholarly engagement and assesses the development of the new virtual community at war, with an examination of the 2010 case of Richard Strandlof and his fraudulent identity as wounded American war veteran Rick Duncan who was actively opposing war. New media has been used by community activist groups who detect and publicise such impersonations in both Australia and the United States, and in a more prosaic manner by soldiers and their families who just want their voices to be heard.

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