The emergence of iWar: Changing practices and perceptions of military engagement in a digital era

The present article investigates the influences of new media technologies on perception and practices of warfare. Drawing on established conceptual frameworks, such as virtuous war and diffused war, the article argues for the fundamentally ambiguous nature of the Internet and social networking technologies that facilitate democratic participation and political activism, but at the same time enable unprecedented forms of oppression, surveillance and control. The article develops the term iWar to account for the technological affordances that facilitate the latter, and introduces five key dimensions of the concept – individuation, implicitness, interactivity, intimacy and immediacy. These dimensions are then connected to specific socio-technological dynamics, before their impact on practices and perceptions of warfare is sketched out.