Matthew VanDyke always intended to fight in Libya. In February 2011, VanDyke — then a 31-year-old aspiring filmmaker — journeyed to the North African nation in the early throes of revolution. He had told his mother and girlfriend that he would be guarding weapons convoys. In reality, he would enlist in the rebellion, be captured, spend six months in solitary confinement and escape to fight the end of the war.

Now, a little more than one year after his return, he's headed to Syria to film (and possibly fight) another war.

A self-described travel filmmaker, VanDyke spent years traversing North Africa and the Middle East by motorcycle, befriending Libyans and other travelers along the way. When fighting broke out at the start of 2011, VanDyke's Libyan friends informed him over Google Chat and Facebook of the dire situation then unfolding.

"One message said, 'If I die, will you tell your friends about me?'" recalls VanDyke, who holds a degree in Middle Eastern Security Studies from Georgetown University. He resolved to help. In February, soon after learning of the budding Libyan revolution, he said goodbye to his girlfriend and mother and boarded a plane.

As on previous adventures, he brought along his camera. "I figured one day these guys would want to show their kids how they overthrew Gaddafi," he says.

His footage — seen in the videos above and below — tells the story of a revolution in its infancy: Civilians-turned-soldiers raid weapons depots while auto mechanics weld truck-mounted machine guns together. It's a familiar tale, but one made increasingly possible by the influence of social media.

"One guy would figure it out," explains VanDyke, "and then he'd share the knowledge." With the knowledge of war spreading quickly over social networks, the Libyan revolution quickly turned into high gear.

Just six days after arriving in Libya, VanDyke was captured while on a reconnaissance mission. For reasons that remain unclear, the Gaddafi regime publicly denied custody of VanDyke for months while he sat in Libyan prison. He managed to escape after six months when guards abandoned the prison as the government crumbled. VanDyke once again joined up with the rebels, who had used social networks to mobilize an even larger, more organized fighting force.

"Fighters film war and upload the footage to YouTube," explains VanDyke, who fires truck-mounted machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the footage provided to Mashable. "They'll mobilize and recruit off it."

It's a process he sees repeating in Syria, where an uprising-turned-civil war continues as one of the Arab Spring's longest-running conflicts. As in Libya, the rebels of Syria leverage the connections of social media against a state which employs advanced military technology against them. The fact that 20 months of bloodshed have drawn the war no closer to a conclusion may be evidence of how evenly matched the two technologies are.

VanDyke is open in his support of the Syrian rebels and his goals for his film, which he hopes will inspire donations of cash, weapons and ammunition for the rebellion.

It's the position of an activist filmmaker rather than that of an objective journalist, and VanDyke is sensitive to the difference. On Twitter, he publicly argues with reporters and critics who frequently accuse him of posing as a journalist, thereby endangering actually-neutral correspondents.

In a lengthy post on his website, VanDyke explicitly denies using the title and states his alignments and intentions in Syria, while also clarifying that he worked as a journalist prior to joining the Libyan revolution in 2011.

Whether VanDyke's film will have the effect he desires — or will even be finished — remains to be seen. The future of social technology in war, however, is far more certain.

"Fighting in a war and filming a war is now the way it will be forever," says VanDyke. "And that's a good thing."