Counter-media: TamilNet and the creation of metanarratives from below

ABSTRACT

A senior editor of TamilNet.com, a Tamil nationalist news portal that focuses on political affairs pertaining to Tamils from the South Asian island of Sri Lanka, had observed that one of the functions of the website was ‘counter-counterinsurgency’. This paper explores how, in the aftermath of the end of the military conflict in Sri Lanka between the state and the Tamil nationalist insurgency led by the Tamil Tigers in May 2009, TamilNet has projected through its news coverage and editorials a political discourse of ‘Eelam Tamil’ nationalism as a counter to the narratives of dominant discourses around Sri Lanka’s politics. This paper takes into consideration the emphasis that counterinsurgency places on tapping alternate micronarratives to diffuse the political struggle of the population it wants to domesticate, further explaining how TamilNet strategically creates a metanarrative of an ‘anti-establishment’ Tamil nationalism to prevent the dilution of the demand of Eelam Tamil national self-determination. The paper concludes that the virtual space as a zone of information warfare compels counter-media like TamilNet to construct metanarratives from below to contest hegemonic narratives from above.

KEYWORDS:

• Counterinsurgency
• Sri Lanka
• TamilNet
• Media
• Self-Determination

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For instance, Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan alias Karuna, a former LTTE commander of the East, defected to the Sri Lankan side citing regional differences with the LTTE central leadership in 2004. The Sri Lankan government, besides assisting Karuna to form a pro-government paramilitary group, also used this incident to contest the Tamil nationalist narrative and its claim to represent all Eelam Tamils in the island.

2. The Sri Lankan government began using Tamil Muslim paramilitary groups as early as 1985 to counter the Tamil militants. See Satyendra (n.d.).

3. It is to be noted that for quite some time now, TamilNet has preferred the usage of ‘Eezham’ to ‘Eelam’. ‘Zh’ is a phoneme peculiar to the Tamil language and its closest English equivalent is the letter ‘L’ pronounced with stress. While TamilNet’s upholding of the ‘Eezham Tamil’ identity is political, its logic for preferring ‘Eezham’ to ‘Eelam’ is more cultural than political. Read TamilNet (2008), on this subject.

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Karthick Ram Manoharan

Karthick Ram Manoharan is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). He received his PhD from the Department of Government, University of Essex. A monograph based on his thesis titled 'Frantz Fanon: Identity and Resistance' is forthcoming this year. He has written extensively on Tamil politics.