107 - Identity Salience and Asian Media Representation

Asian representation in media has had recent breakthrough. Films such as Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Fire Island, Crazy Rich Asians, and influencers such as Bretman Rock, Joel Kim Booster, Jessica Vu, and more influential people and forms of media have received great appraisal and attention for being pioneers of Asian representation that Asian-media consumers have longed for. This research project is a pilot study that will examine identity salience of Asian individuals through the media portrayal of Asian people. Identity salience refers to the value of identity to an individual, and this project examines how identity is reinforced through the representation of the Asian identity in forms of media. Participants were interviewed on their thoughts on Asian representation across a broad range of media, how media representation affected their own identity salience, and what their vision of media representation of Asian people shall entail in the future forms of media to come.