The Quagmire of Ideologies: An Ethnography of Kurdish Virtual Life-World on Facebook

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using critical virtual ethnography, this article deals with the virtual life-world of Iranian Kurds on Facebook. We used a Constructivist grounded theory approach (as a data analysis method) to understand how Facebook is used as a space to reproduce Kurdish identity with semantic symbols and cultural patterns that are shared amongst Kurds. We argue that these common cultural patterns and meanings on Facebook have become ideological with the dominance of major ideologies that interpret ‘self’ and ‘other’ based on their particular interpretation of Kurdish identity and history. Any individual or group not fitting into this narrative is excluded from the Kurdish virtual society. As a major ideology, Kurdish nationalism assumes that the Kurds had a glorious ethnic history in the past, which was stolen by the ‘other’, paving the way for further oppressing the Kurds until the present. Different Kurdish ideologies on Facebook believe the ‘other’ must be destroyed to break this oppression chain. Each ideology interprets this ‘other’ differently. We show how Kurdish Facebook has become a virtual colonial land, a quagmire of ideologies, where subjects are colonised in different ways.