“China Virus” and “Kung-Flu”: A Critical Race Case Study of Asian American Journalists’ Experiences During COVID-19

Abstract

The researchers designed a critical race case study to represent media coverage by and experiences of Asian American1 journalists during the first months of COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. After analyzing data inductively, the researchers drew upon critical race theory scholarship to apply the theoretical concepts of race consciousness, whiteness as property, and the hegemony of racial hierarchy to analyze Asian American journalists’ experience during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers used the Asian American Journalists Association’s repository of news coverage, webinars, and panels written and presented by Asian American journalists; in-depth interviews with Asian American journalists; and their social media posts about Asian American experience and the pandemic as data sources. Triangulated across the data sources, the following themes are represented: (a) Asian American Journalists: Living and Reporting Multiple, Intersecting Crises; (b) Anti-Asian American Discrimination and Racism; and (c) The Paradox of Asian American hypervisibility and invisibility; the subtheme is “Calling for Diversity, Equity, and Transformation in the Newsroom.”