2 M. THE-THITSAR Myanmar’s experience is similar to that of many of its regional South Asian and Southeast Asian neighbors, where linguistic diversity is an important fact of life but remains understudied. However, Myanmar offers a unique case study on the important role of language policies as a result of its recent political history, the history of ethnicity and race under the British, and near-universal levels of literacy that are higher than most of its regional neighbors. In this paper, I use content analysis of ethnicity-based media on Facebook and key informant interviews to demonstrate that Facebook language policies have privileged the use of Myanmar’s majority language over the country’s myriad minority languages. I also find that Facebook simultaneously helps promote the use of minority languages and collective identity by enabling minority groups to communicate and share information with each other, to coordinate cultural events, to mobilize against efforts to impose the majority language and for the protection of minority rights, and to gain access to public or popular figures they view as their leaders. The study also sheds lights on a number of ethnic media which utilize the multi-dimensional communication facilities offered by Facebook to preserve their languages, the utility and value of which are undermined by Myanmar’s official language policies. These efforts at preservation are limited among some smaller minority groups which have limited capacity to adapt to modern digital technology or to circumvent the limitations Facebook places on minority languages. Background Myanmar is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. There are 135 officially recognized ethnic groups and more than one hundred language groups.3 The majority Bamar constitute about 68% of the population, followed by the Shan 10%, Karen 7%, Rakhine 4%, Mon 2%, Kachin 1.5%, Chin 1.5% and Karenni (Kayah) 0.5%, with the remainder composed of at least one hundred other smaller and endangered language groups.4 Since Myanmar’s independence from the British Empire in 1948, under the guise of nation-building, the government adopted nationalistic policies privileging the majority Bamar ethnic group and making Burmese the only constitutionally-recognized language. Ethnic minorities’ demands for the fulfillment of pre-independence promises of greater autonomy were suppressed by the military coup of General Ne Win, who ruled the country from 1962 until 1988. Many ethnic organizations went underground and fought against the government in Myanmar’s border areas, making the country home to one of the longest-running civil wars in the world. In the early 1970s, Ne Win imple­ mented socialist one-party authoritarian rule as a guiding principle to unify the multiethnic country. The policy of ‘Burmanization’ reinforced a national identity based on the ethnic Bamar majority and denied spaces for ethnic minorities, as it considered linguistic diversity a barrier in building a unified socialist nation and in maintaining its power.5 The socialist government adopted Burmese as the sole medium of instruction in all university and pre-university classes and allowed teaching in minority languages only up to fourth grade in minority-populated areas.6 Popular protests against the socialist regime in 1988 led to another wave of author­ itarianism after a new military junta took charge as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).7 The SLORC continued Ne Win’s earlier project of imposing a homogenous Bamar-based national identity. It launched harsh military campaigns