Eelam Online

Book excerpt: This book details the potential of computer mediated technologies, particularly the internet, in creating and nurturing political and cultural identities among the widely dispersed “conflict-generated” Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora and traces the engagement of the disapora in Australia with the online media in the struggle for a homeland. Taking the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka as a given, the book explores the way in which new media has added dimensions to the issue. Although the theoretical framework of the book overflows into the areas of political communication, journalism, media theories and studies, nationalism, and social psychology, it draws heavily from the theories of Ellul’s “social propaganda” and Anderson’s concept of nation as an “imagined community.” Divided into three parts, the first part explores the potential of the internet to lead to the “imagination” of the nation by the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora; the second part traces the online engagement of the diaspora in the making of the homeland; and the third part contrasts it with the experiences and expectations of the homeland of the second generation of migrants in Australia and the Sri Lankan refugees in India. With the focus shifting to the diaspora after the announcement of the decimation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka in May 2009, the book aims to contribute to an understanding of the dynamics to underscore the increasingly significant role that communication technologies play in deciding the weave and warp of the fabric of a nation.