ASIAN ETHNICITY 17 Non-Bamar populations have also been able to take advantage of Facebook’s multi­ dimensional communication and information facilities to communicate with each other in their languages, share information, organize activities, and engage in campaigns. As a result, Facebook has enlarged a space for minorities whose language and cultural survival had been undermined by government policies. It has also created venues for minorities with shared grievances to collectively challenge an existing power structure that maintains an exclusionary identity based on Burmese majority. Facebook’s other communicative amenities have also reduced existing language hierarchies that favor Burmese as an official language. However, the study also shows that some minorities continue to face serious chal­ lenges in preserving their languages since their speakers have shown a preference for the easy access to the majority Burmese language. Although there are those who willingly use Burmese for social, cultural, political, and economic reasons, there are minority language speakers who prefer to use their mother tongue languages but face logistical hurdles as well as peer pressure to express themselves in a popular majority language. Many smaller groups have a limited capacity to adapt to modern technology and digitization of language and thus to access news through Facebook in their languages. To this extent, Facebook has furthered the information gap between speakers of majority language and those of smaller minority languages and enabled certain groups with more resources and capability to utilize digital communication to their own advantages. Being able to instantly announce the birth of a new child to one’s community (most groups manage this type of communication) does not have the same consequences as learning about how one’s community or one’s army is under siege. Private groups formed by smaller communities also have the potential to serve as a venue for rumors and disinformation if they do not have easy access to more accountable and public official news pages. This paper demonstrates the need to pay attention to the multitude of functions offered by Facebook and shed light on the influence of Facebook for the survival of minority languages and collective identity, which varies across groups depending on their size, adaptability of scripts and modern technology, and effectiveness of ethnic media. Notes 1. Brown and Ganguly, Fighting Words. 2. Ibid. 3. The government recognizes only 135 ethnic groups, and these categories remain contested because of the arbitrary nature in which the categories were drawn. The Myanmar govern­ ment has not released ethnicity data from its most recent census in 2014, which was carried out with support from the UNFPA and UK Department of International Development (DFID); Simons and Fennig, Ethnologue. 4. See World Population Review at https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/myanmarpopulation/. 5. Callahan, “Language Policy in Modern Burma.” 6. Thawnghmung, The ‘Other’ Karens, 148. 7. Callahan, “Junta Dreams or Nightmares?” 54. 8. Smith, Ethnic Groups in Burma; and Gravers, Nationalism as Political Paranoia in Burma. 9. Callahan, “Junta Dreams or Nightmares?” 10. Smith, State of Fear; and Lintner, “Burma, Laos, and Cambodia, Status of Media.” 11. Thawnghmung and Yadana, “Citizenship and Minority Rights.”