Virtual Ethnicity? The Visual Construction of ‘Sinhalaness’ on Social Media in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Developed ostensibly to enhance social interaction, social media has become a powerful tool of pedagogy, cognition and politics. Visual content is particularly powerful since it is processed quicker than text, generating immediate emotional responses and a higher degree of memorability. This study looks at the way ‘Sinhalaness’ has been visually portrayed on social media by Sinhalese users by analysing a body of visual artefacts publicly posted on Facebook between 2011 and 2018. A content analysis of these suggests that in the immediate period after the civil war (1983–2009), online Sinhalaness has become largely defined by an increased religious, specifically Buddhist, consciousness, supplemented by war memories. This contrasts with the largely linguistic basis of Sinhala identity articulated in the pre-2009 period.