Not just a joke: we scoured TikTok for anti-Asian humour during the pandemic, and found too many disappointing memes

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 11:56:04 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/not-just-a-joke-we-scoured-tiktok-for-anti-asian-humour-during-the-pandemic-and-found-too-many-disappointing-memes-184166>

"We live in deeply unequal societies where certain groups, such as racial and
sexual minorities, continue to experience structural oppression. Humour
targeted at these groups can cause individual harm through its cumulative
effects, and contribute to broader social harms too.

Much of our social interaction today takes place online. So it makes sense that
significant attention is paid to issues such as online hate speech, harassment
and misinformation.

However, a more challenging problem is the conduct of users who aren’t
necessarily trying to harm others, but still participate online in ways that
can do so. For example, TikTok users have participated in viral parody
challenges that trivialise police brutality, domestic violence and even the
Holocaust.

The COVID-19 health crisis pushed digital platforms to curb the spread of
misinformation, but it seems they did less to minimise anti-Asian content –
despite signs the pandemic was being “racialised”.

In our research, we investigated how the “humorous” racist stereotyping of
people of Asian descent emerged on TikTok during the pandemic, and how such
behaviour should be addressed."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

Comment via email

Home E-Mail Sponsors Index Search About Us