As a new type of cyber-nationalistic action, “D8 expedition” was a self-performance. Its targeted audience was not so much the publics and media across the Taiwan Strait as the participants themselves and mainland media and Internet users. In a disenchanted era of commercialization and individualization, "D8 expedition” gave young netizens an opportunity to imagine collective heroism. At the same time, as a new media event, "D8 expedition” was in a delicate relationship with state politics and betrayed the uneasy overtones of an imperial mentality.