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Sociological Inquiry OnlineFirst.** https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/soin.12595 (equal authorship, with Hyerim Jo).
Drawing on ethnic boundary-making literature, this study investigates how Korean newspapers and readers adjusted their ethnic boundaries towards Asian migrants in response to the evolving phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed the extent and nature of coverage in five major newspapers on anti-Asian racism in the US published between January 1 and May 24, 2020, along with associated reader comments. During the maintenance phase, marked by persistent concerns about the resurgence of infections, we observed the highest number of articles and the most significant disparities between the media's portrayal and reader reactions. Contrary to the newspapers, readers perceived the racist threat faced by Asian migrants differently depending on the pandemic circumstances, displaying a more flexible boundary-making. Despite the general description of Asian diasporas as “innocent comrades” in newspapers, readers viewed the Chinese and Korean diasporas as “blameworthy foreigners,” regarding them as potential threats to the nation. We discuss factors and conditions that might have influenced the formation of transborder ethnic boundaries among Korean newspapers and the public.
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/23326492231193399. SocArXiv version here. (first author, with W. Carson Byrd)
Recent studies on political attitude formations have developed the ethnoracialization framework, which emphasizes the roles of racial hierarchies and ethnic identities interconnected with national origins. However, existing research has not established analytical strategies to incorporate this framework, leaving a gap between theory and practice. We propose an alternative analytical model to examine ethnoracialized political attitudes using the case of Asian Americans’ support for race-conscious college admissions. Using data from the 2016 National Asian American Survey, our effect coding reveals how Asian Americans’ race-conscious admissions attitudes vary by ethnicity. Then, we investigate whether this variation can be attributed to theoretical predictors of such attitudes, including the mention of previously supportive Supreme Court decisions on race-conscious admissions, through regression modeling. Most ethnic groups’ mean support scores significantly vary from the grand mean of Asian Americans, and those gaps remain significant even after controlling for socioeconomic backgrounds and general predictors. As an exception, redistributionism accounted for some ethnic variations. Certain predictors such as individual experiences of the U.S. opportunity structure and the racial justice frame shaped overall race-conscious admissions attitudes but did not reduce ethnic variations. These findings highlight the need for increased attention to the analysis of ethnic communities when studying ethnoracialized political attitudes, as our current theories appear insufficient in explaining variations observed between ethnic groups. Thus, conducting research that explores the interplay between Asian Americans, racialization, and ethnic communities will provide a more comprehensive understanding of Asian Americans and potentially other ethnoracialized groups.
Sociological Perspectives 2021. 64(5):747-764. https://doi.org/10.1177/07311214211005484. (co-author, with Angie Y. Chung, Hyerim Jo, and Fan Yang, equal authorship)
Using an inductive framing analysis of news coverage, we examine how the most popular liberal and conservative news media in the United States and South Korea mobilize different nationalist narratives on China in responding to social, economic, and political upheavals during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify three major areas of political cleavage in both Korean and U.S. media discourse on nationalist identities vis-à -vis the construction of the national or racialized “Other.” This includes (1) imagined solidarity against China as an adversary; (2) political disputes over boundary-making; (3) and the construction of ethnonational belonging and exclusion. Our research underscores how intrastate and interstate shifts during periods of crisis can heighten political cleavages along racial and ethnic fault lines and complicate dominant frameworks of civic and ethnic nationalism in both countries.