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
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:	https://doi.org/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
URI:	Publisher
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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