Kurdish Diaspora Online [electronic resource] : From Imagined Community to Managing Communities / by Jowan Mahmod.

Introduction -- 1. Multiculturalism Debates, Policies, and Concepts -- 2. Nations, Diaspora, Identity and Alternative Explorations -- 3. State Struggles in the Middle East and the Kurdish Diaspora -- 4. "Is it OK?" - Challenging Gender Roles -- 5. "Am I a Real Kurd?" - Deconstructing Kurdish Identity -- 6. "My Kurdistan Chapter": Returning Home -- 7. Towards a Weakened Imagined Community.

The argument offered in this book is that new technology, as opposed to traditional media such as television, radio and newspaper, is working against the national grain to weaken its imagined community. Online activities and communications between people and across borders suggest that digital media has strong implications for different articulations of identity and belongingness, which open new ways of thinking about the imagined community. The findings are based on transnational activities by Kurdish diaspora members across borders that have pushed them to rethink notions of belonging and identity. Through a multidisciplinary and comparative approach, and multifaceted (online-offline) methodologies, the book unveils tensions between new and old media, and how the former is not only changing social relations but also exposing existing ones. Living in two or more cultures, speaking multiple languages, and engaging in transnational practices, diaspora individuals may have created a momentum that discloses how the imagined nation is diminishing in this digital era.