Milblogs and soldier representations of the Afghanistan War: The case of Sweden.

Building on the notion that military blogs (milblogs) can support national strategic narratives, the aim of the article is to deepen our knowledge of exactly how blogging that depicts soldiers’ personal experiences of ‘everyday life’ can serve to support a strategic narrative. This article explores empirically how Swedish milblogs published between January 2010 and April 2012 articulate the experience of being a soldier in the Afghanistan mission. The analysis shows that soldiering is treated as an everyday practice, de-dramatized and routinized where military assignments are meshed with civilian duties. The article concludes that the ‘normalization’ of war in milblogs can potentially serve to strengthen national strategic narratives, facilitate recruitment of soldiers and add to growing ‘militarism’ in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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