Expanding a country's borders during war: The winternet war diary

Citizen journalism has changed the nature of how news is disseminated about local and global events. We conducted an ethnographic study of a particular kind of citizen journalism: The use of war diaries on the Internet. These diaries were targeted to an audience outside of the informants' countries and cultures. We found that people wrote war diaries to reach out to people who were in environments not in a war as a way of sensemaking, for impression management, and to be participants in the social production of news and opinions about the war. We discuss how the use of a "war diary" as a public narrative empowered our informants and how they contributed to the social interpretation of their culture during war. Through the Internet war diary, people can communicate news beyond the physical boundaries of their country providing benefits to producers of the information as well as the consumers.