‘Entangled in War Stories’ – Affect and Representations of War Narratives in Fanvids

Abstract

This article introduces war-themed fan productions as a medium to tell and spread war narratives, using the example of YouTube fan videos (fanvids). These remixes of third-party audio-visual resources provide information about which and in what way military conflicts are remembered by amateur creators. Based on online ethnographic research and quantitative and qualitative video analysis, the author explores fanvids as an intertextual, highly emotional medium. Furthermore, drawing on Wilhelm Schapp’s ‘entanglement’ theory, fanvids are discussed as a medium causing affect in the viewer, who through fanvid consumption can potentially engage emotionally in the depicted narratives. Emotive potential of war fanvids is presented based on the analysis of the 2022 war in Ukraine videos created by a Ukrainian user. The author argues that fanvids constitute a valuable source of information about bottom-up war narratives circulating internationally among Internet users and shaping their sentiments.