The Kurdish Diaspora’s Use of Facebook in Shaping a Nation

This book strives to understand the use of Facebook as a social network site by the Kurdish diaspora. Accordingly, the main purpose of the book is to explore how Kurds search for and express their ethnic identity through Facebook. The Kurdish people have been suppressed by four countries—Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria—for centuries and have thus been forced to cope with Turkish, Arabic, and Persian ethnic identity and forbidden to express Kurdish ethnic identity. This book reveals some of the most importance objectives and motivations behind the use of Facebook for Kurds in Norway and shows how Facebook features have been used to rekindle ties between the Kurds and to strengthen their ethnic identity. The Kurdish diaspora has been spread worldwide and the most effective way for the people to connect to each other in the diaspora is through social networking sites. Kurds in the diaspora make extensive use of social media to build ethnic identity. Kurds in the diaspora consider Facebook to be an important communication tool to strengthen their identity by discussing political issues and cultural aspects and reconnecting with friends and families they have lost contact with.