The fallen on Facebook: online war commemoration in the UK

This article investigates how fallen British soldiers of Operation TELIC (Iraq) and Operation Herrick (Afghanistan) are commemorated on the Facebook page British Troops Remembered. Based on an online ethnography and fifteen semi-structured interviews with users of this page, this article aims to better understand how online commemoration is performed, experienced and shaped in everyday life. It argues that people participate in the reproduction of militarism when they promote military values and frame military lives as grievable and worthy through commemorative practices. Paradoxically, although digital commemorative spaces offer new opportunities for people to counter official narratives of warfare and democratize national memory, it is precisely this possibility that keeps people from sharing alternative interpretations of military losses online. By analysing how the logics of militarism are reproduced in everyday encounters online, this article aims to contribute to discussions within critical military studies and memory studies about the relationship between online commemoration and militarism.