How are Asian Americans affected by online misinformation?

Like the vast majority of people, my smartphone is often the first thing I look at in the morning and the last thing I look at before falling asleep. My iPhone serves as my alarm, my GPS, and my music player. Most importantly, it's the primary way I communicate with loved ones and stay on top of an evolving and overwhelming news cycle. I’m not alone in this regard. 

A recent Pew study indicates 86 percent of American adults say they “at least sometimes” get news from a smartphone. Another study found that 20 percent of Americans feel “overloaded by information.” While these numbers provide some useful insights, many existing studies of American media consumption and social media use fail to closely analyze — or omit entirely — a key segment of the population: Asian Americans. Compared to the average American, Asian Americans have drastically different media consumption habits. For first-generation and limited-English proficient individuals, these contrasts are even greater. 

I use WeChat, for example, to lurk in extended family group chats, watch cooking videos, and see pictures of my cousin’s newborn baby. But for first-generation Chinese Americans like my parents, WeChat — a popular instant messaging and social networking platform used by members of the Chinese diaspora — is a key source of local, national, and international news. This subtle difference highlights a larger problem in current research, which flattens a diverse community of dozens of ethnic groups into a high-achieving, tech-savvy monolith, and assumes someone like me, who was born and raised in the United States, has the same habits as newer arrivals and English-language learners. Despite Asian Americans being the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States, many conversations around misinformation and media literacy do not consider Asian Americans.

Such misconceptions and the limited nuanced research into Asian American media consumption habits inspired my team at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC to learn more. We conducted 12 focus groups with 101 Asian American individuals between the ages of 15 and 91. We curated diversity across ethnic groups, immigration generation, and English-language proficiency in the participants we recruited. Through the sessions, we tested hypotheses about media consumption based on anecdotal evidence and personal experiences.

Read the full op-ed here.