Textual Analysis of Kurdish Internet

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I described the main constituents of the Kurdish Internet. Among them were websites, chat rooms, weblogs, and social networking services such as forums, YouTube, and Facebook. I showed that, in contrast to the traditional mainstream media—including television—the Internet has amplified marginalized voices that are excluded from the discursive domains of the dominant Kurdish political organizations. In this chapter, I carry out textual analysis of the verbal language and images of various Internet constituents (e.g., websites, chat rooms, weblogs, forums, and social networking services such as YouTube). My objective is to locate the discursive strategies that are used on the Internet to construct Kurdish identities. The focus of the investigation at this level is captured in this broad question: How do Kurdish online resources use language and images to define and present Kurdish identities?