ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a portrait of the new civilian volunteers in wartime, their roles, and the way they pave the way for a new form of activism in conflict zones, positioning them at the intersection of civic resistance (defensive, disruption-oriented collective action) and longer-horizon activism (norm-shaping campaigns). Drawing inspiration from ethnographic fieldwork in Ukraine over three years, qualitative fictional portraiture will introduce the reader to the volunteers populating the proposed three-cluster typology of modern volunteering. Grounded in the interdisciplinary lens of bioethics, military ethics, and international humanitarian law, this chapter examines how modern volunteers navigate legitimacy, risk, and responsibility in the context of increasing hostilities in the fifth dimension of war. These categories redefine ‘serving’ in wartime, where smartphones replace rifles, and memes become tactical resources. As in The Hunger Games, parachuted aid flows not necessarily to the most deserving tributes but to the most popular. In Ukraine, virality and influence can spell the difference between a fully equipped squad and one left waiting. Visibility and momentum function as strategic assets: the more online traction volunteers gain, the more resources they attract. Warfare’s civilian layer thus operates within competing attention economies, where the reach of algorithms and human empathy intersect.
