Asian American Connective Action in the Age of Social Media: Civic Engagement, Contested Issues, and Emerging Identities

228 Pages·2022·6.242 MB·English

by  James S. Lai

Asian American Connective Action
in the Age of Social Media

James S. Lai
Asian American Connective Action
in the Age of Social Media
Civic Engagement, Contested Issues,
and Emerging Identities
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
tupress.temple.edu
Copyright © 2022 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System
of Higher Education
All rights reserved
Published 2022
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lai, James S. (James Siu-Fong), 1968– author.
Title: Asian American connective action in the age of social media : civic
engagement, contested issues, and emerging identities / James S. Lai.
Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2022. | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Develops a ‘connective
action’ model for Asian Americans to examine the relationship between
social media platforms and civic engagement”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021023013 (print) | LCCN 2021023014 (ebook) | ISBN
9781439919088 (cloth) | ISBN 9781439919095 (paperback) | ISBN
9781439919101 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Political participation—Technological innovations—United
States. | Asian Americans—Political activity. | Asian
Americans—Political activity—Case studies. | Internet and
activism—United States. | Internet and activism—United States—Case
studies. | Civil society—United States. | Communication in
politics—Technological innovations—United States. | Asian Americans
and mass media. | Case studies. lcgft
Classification: LCC JF799.5 .L35 2022 (print) | LCC JF799.5 (ebook) | DDC
323/.0420973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023013
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023014
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of my beloved mentors and friends
Rámon D. Chácon, Eric O. Hanson, Don T. Nakanishi,
and Michael B. Preston

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Logging On and Getting Civically Connected 1
2 The Racial Paradox and Emerging Political Contours of
Asian Americans: How Connective Action Challenges and
Amplifies Them 23
3 Conceptualizing a Model for Asian American Connective Action 38
4 Case Study 1: The 2016 Trial of New York Police Department
Officer Peter Liang and the Connective Action Mobilization by
First-Generation Chinese Americans 51
5 Case Study 2: The Asian American Community’s Online
and Offline Affirmative Action Battle over the 2012 California
Senate Constitutional Amendment 5 Bill 70
6 Case Study 3: Data Disaggregation and the 2016 California
Assembly Bill 1726—How Connective Action Helped Determine
the Narrative and Outcome 90
7 Case Study 4: The 18 Million Rising Website and Its Role as
an Online Conduit for Progressive Asian American Activism 106
viii / Contents
8 Case Study 5: The 2016 California Textbook Controversy—
South Asian Americans and the #DontEraseIndia Campaign 123
9 Case Study 6: Establishing World War II Korean Comfort
Women Memorials in U.S. Cities and the Online Mobilization
against Them 136
10 On the Virtues and Perils of Asian American
Connective Action 155
Notes 175
References 179
Index 201
Preface
T
he impetus for this book began after reading the news coverage of the
February 20, 2016 national day of protests when several thousand first-
generation or immigrant Chinese Americans organized public dem-
onstrations in forty-one U.S. and Canadian cities through the popular so-
cial media smartphone app known as WeChat. They marched collectively
in support of former NYPD officer Peter Liang, a Chinese American, who
was undergoing a criminal trial for an all too common scenario—for negli-
gently shooting and killing Akai Gurley, an unarmed African American
male, while on duty. Prior to that day, many of these protestors had never
participated in any prior forms of civic engagement such as attending a politi-
cal rally.
These mass coordinated demonstrations could not have happened with-
out the process of digitalized networked action known as connective action.
As a political behavioralist who studies U.S. race and ethnicity, I was en-
thralled by the coordinated mobilization efforts that took shape but at the
same time conflicted about its larger race relation context, given the Black
Lives Matter movement, which I personally support. However, while in the
process of researching this topic, it became clearly evident that Asian Amer-
ican connective action encompasses the entire gamut of ideologies from con-
servative to progressive political action.
The salience of Asian American connective action comes at a time of
two current, divergent trends that shape the larger Asian American com-
munity: on one hand, they have one of the relatively lowest voter turnout