King-O’Riain, Rebecca Chiyoko (2022) #Wasian Check: Remixing ‘Asian + White’ Multiraciality on TikTok. Genealogy, 6 (55). pp. 1-21. ISSN 2313-5778
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Abstract
TikTok is the fastest growing short video application and immensely popular with younger
generations to express their thoughts, ideas, and most relevant to this issue, their identities including
mixed-race identity. This paper asks: How did young mixed-race people choose to express their
identity on TikTok in the #wasian trend and how does the app shape these mixed-race identity
expressions? The answer lies in how the emotional affordances of TikTok app itself shape how it is
used by creators in mimicking and mimetic ways and how people respond, through video and text.
The article argues that the #wasian trends reinforce the racial and genealogical legacy of mixedness,
often through showing parents or blood relatives, which is in creative tension with simultaneously
remixing and asserting racial multiplicity. The claim to wasianess moves the private sphere (bedroom
culture, family and notions of race) into the public and in so doing creates new potentialities for the
creation of a global #wasian community on TikTok.
Item Type: | Article |
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Keywords: | wasian; #wasian; mixed-race; Asian; TikTok; transconnective; digital media; social media; |
Academic Unit: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, MUSSI Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology |
Item ID: | 16396 |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/genealogy6020055 |
Depositing User: | Dr Rebecca King O Riain |
Date Deposited: | 08 Aug 2022 12:08 |
Journal or Publication Title: | Genealogy |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Refereed: | Yes |
Related URLs: | |
URI: | https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/16396 |
Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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