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

Abstract

Activism among Asian Americans has risen in recent years. Asian American Connective Action in the Age of Social Media: Civic Engagement, Contested Issues, and Emerging Identities is a timely book exploring the way Asian Americans use social media to participate in civic activities and politics in the United States, as well as how these experiences affect their political identities. This book is highly relevant for anyone seeking to understand the use of social media in mobilization, the impact of social media on participatory politics, and the racial politics of Asian Americans. In Chapter One, author James S. Lai sets the discussion in the context of two seemingly opposing trends among Asian Americans: low voter participation, on the one hand, and high digital connectivity with the Asian American community, on the other. Lai then poses the book’s main research questions, which include 1) how online ‘‘connective action’’—actions such as posting and creating a chat group via social media platforms to voice and organize group concerns—can facilitate offline civic engagement (such as political protest), 2) the extent to which the panethnic identity in the Asian American community emerges during online connective action campaigns, and 3) how, given the ideological, ethnic, and class diversity within their national community, Asian Americans can fit in with future progressive, multiracial political coalitions on contentious public policy issues such as racial profiling and affirmative action. Chapter Two sets the theoretical background: in particular, how this book engages in the discussion on racial politics and the possible role of social media in shifting race relations, political incorporation, and current racial hierarchies. Chapter Three establishes a theoretical model that frames the three dimensions—the Medium Dimension, the Goals Dimension, and the Site Dimension—within which Asian American connective action takes place. Chapters Four through Nine—the main body of the book—zoom in on six diverse case studies of connective action by Asian Americans, revealing the heterogeneity among Asian groups and their issues. These cases include mobilization around the 2016 trial of police officer Peter Liang for killing Akai Gurley (an unarmed African American), the fight against affirmative action in higher education admissions in California in 2012, the battle against a 2016 California Assembly bill on Data Disaggregation of Asian Americans, the exclusively online Asian American organizations’ activism on immigration issues, the 2016 California textbook controversy regarding efforts to prevent India from being replaced by South Asia in California textbooks, and activism in connection with the erecting of monuments in U.S. cities to commemorate the atrocity of Korean, Chinese, and Filipino comfort women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II. These case studies reveal the diversity and tension in civic participation within the Asian American community. The trial of Peter Liang is a prime example of the ideological divisions within this community. As Lai argues, first-generation Chinese American protesters tend to focus primarily on Liang’s civil rights and the perceptions that he was a racial scapegoat, whereas the central issues for progressive Asian American activists who are part of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement are that of White supremacy and Asian American privilege. Additionally, the patterns of activism diverge. Some Asian Americans’ civic activities embody an inward pattern, with mobilization rooted in ethnic/community networks, whereas other activities are characterized by an outward pattern, with an emphasis on panethnic and multiracial coalitions with African American and Latinx people. Moreover, the case studies illustrate that, far from being unified, the Asian identity consists of differences concerning class, religion, language, 254 Reviews