The recent popularity of 'surprise military homecomings' on YouTube offers an opportunity to revisit debates about the role of online spectatorship in performances of citizenship, particularly during times of war. This article argues that these videos position spectatorship as a civic duty and allow for a mediated form of affective participation, which the author refers to as vicarious sacrifice.

This article explores the rhetorical function of Internet memes as memory actants. It contributes to an ongoing conversation about the ways in which digital communication has transformed the relationship between media, memory, and the archive by disrupting predicable “decay times” and emphasizing memory as a “connective” process rather than a “collective” product. Through an analysis of memetic responses to affective flashpoints in the collective US experience, namely, the 9/11 constellation, this article explores the potential for memes to influence not only the content of public memory but also the attitudes with which we remember that content.

Post 9/11 wars have been mediated more than any other conflict in history. Just as television defined Vietnam and the first Gulf war, the internet is defining what we know, see, and remember about Iraq and Afghanistan. A handful of communication scholars have begun to pay attention to the way personnel represent themselves online, arguing that warrior-produced videos offer an alternative to the military–media control over information. This article takes up internet meme videos as mediated forms of cultural participation, arguing that the compulsion for US troops to create meme videos is fueled in part by the technology and in part by the popular culture they still interact with.

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