ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the results of research into Afghan veterans' web sites. It analyses the role of web sites devoted to the Afghan War in the creation process of collective memory. The chapter examines the web sites as a living space for online communities and employed elements of netnography and qualitative content analysis to find the common features inherent in the majority of the selected communities and to attempt to highlight their functional peculiarities. The internet is becoming an alternative forum for the public presentation of individual and collective memory, but, as a result of the fragmentation and thematic multiplicity of local sites, memory of the war is reflected on the internet as if in a kaleidoscopic array of virtual 'mirrors'. Sites, forums, blogs and other parts of the internet become places for the everyday production of social relationships and practices, which substantiates sociologists' desire to address and study such virtual communities.
