#WeWillWin: Mobilisation of Jerusalem's Armenian youth and digital acts of citizenship during the Second Artsakh War

Abstract

AbstractThis focused digital ethnography explores Armenian diaspora youth mobilisation via hashtag activism concerning a homeland conflict, examining the impact of digital citizenship acts on diaspora nationalism and identity negotiation. Taking Jerusalem's Armenian School as a case study, I analyse the school's use of Facebook amid a global pandemic to coordinate youth mobilisation around the viral hashtag #WeWillWin during the Second Artsakh War between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Ethnographic content analysis was applied to student‐created audiovisual materials, which were contextualised using interviews with schoolteachers and young adults. Considering complex geopolitics within a conflict‐ridden landscape, Armenian youth's audiovisual posts in cyberspace represent empowering, performative statements of identity and citizenship tethered to an imagined Armenian transnation. For diasporic youth facing uncertainty, crisis and marginalisation in local milieus, social media can constitute hybrid spaces between home and homeland for expressions of agency and dissent, identity negotiation and citizenship performance.