Abstract
This thesis is based on six-month ethnographic fieldwork in Yangon, Myanmar conducted in the spring of 2018. Through three different perspectives, I aim at an understanding of how Facebook gained and withholds its position as “The Internet” amongst local users in Yangon. What happens when Facebook is used as the internet, and how does this affect my informants, and how do they interpret it? Theoretically, the thesis draws on the two main approaches of how to understand the new technology and internet; as a mediator or a facilitator. I explore how digital script can be an obstacle to technological development. Digital encoding systems of Burmese text and its challenges, amongst other issues, discriminate local languages, and how it limits the access to the internet outside of Facebook. Furthermore, in discussing emotion and affect, I explain why my informants could say, “the real feelings is online.” I aim at an understanding of how feelings can be interpreted as a potential emotional compass to navigate the internet. Lastly, I discuss Facebook and performed sociality, and how the three different levels (internationally, nationally, and locally) affect and creates the context, norms, and social frames the local users socialize within.