Helpful or Hurtful? Analyzing the Internet’s Role in Minority and Indigenous Language Actor-Networks

There are many languages around the world that are at risk of going extinct, and some groups see the internet and social media as tools to prevent this phenomenon from happening, while others see them as tools to accelerate this process. Language is inherently a part of culture, so the loss of languages threatens many communities' histories, identities, and cultural practices, which is the motivation for certain groups to attempt to either support or oppress the use of such languages. In this paper I analyze different case studies that are examples of governments that fall somewhere along this spectrum of motivation. To achieve this I use Actor-Network theory to describe the relationships between actors such as national governments, social media platforms, and language speakers. These cases consist of the Uyghur language in China, the Irish language in Ireland, the Maori language in New Zealand, and the Mayan languages in Central America. In all cases, the internet and social media platforms were found to be valuable in promoting the use of minority and Indigenous languages when unimpeded by other actors. In the first case, the Chinese government uses the internet to censor Uyghur language content, and to make it easier for themselves to monitor the Uyghur people’s internet activity in order to oppress their culture. In the cases of the Irish and Maori languages, the Irish and Kiwi governments use the internet in support of their Indigenous languages, while Mayan language speakers are left to build networks of language speakers online on their own without any government action. In these actor-networks, the influence that governments have on languages through the internet and social media platforms means that in order to successfully work towards revitalizing endangered languages, we must consider internet and technology policy’s impact.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

STS Advisor: Caitlin Wylie