February 2019, a question regarding the fonts was posted. (figure VI) This is an example of
how different participations in the market are slowly making a change, and how it is looked
upon. One local user describes it as enforcement implying that Unicode is not something
positive, but rather something forced, while the second local user uses the words language
improvement. These two users can be said to represent the division amongst local users in
Myanmar.
The issue of choosing a font is more than just a technical one. As we have seen, it is related
directly to communication practices, access to information, and participation in a global
society. Serval people, alongside my informants, see an urgent need to make a change and to
continue the effort of making Unicode the standardized font, also in Myanmar. With
everything that comes with the fonts, the choice is not that hard to make. As Liao writes:
“Knowing that choosing the right encoding [font] is, in fact, choosing who has access to the
digital world and the opportunities offered there should provide the motivation” (Liao, 2017,
p. 24). Considering how the problem has developed and transformed into a social issue as
well as a technical one, there does not seems to be an obvious solution at the moment. As seen
in figure VI, there are fragments of change, but it is not defined at which level this change is
activated. If it is the infrastructural ways Facebook functions, a social phenomenon or from
the government is uncertain, and it is an exciting field to continue to research in the time to
come. This chapter has aimed at answering how Facebook gained its position in Yangon and
how Facebook can keep this position, what happens in the society and how it affects my
informants through a perspective of the battle of the fonts. Following, I explore the same
questions through a perspective of emotions and affect.
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