Browsing by Subject "Chinese Americans"

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Disinforming Democracy: Analyzing Online Discourse and Misinformation in Immigrant Chinese American Communities During the 2020 U.S. Election
(2023-05) Zhang, Andrew
Democracy relies on the premise that people need factual information to understand public issues and enact appropriate change. But the public has historically been uninformed. The emergence of mis- and disinformation has exacerbated the issue, creating a group of people who have falsehoods undergird their understanding of political topics: the misinformed. And the negative effects of misinformation compound for communities of color, who have unique language and media needs. In immigrant Chinese American communities, misinformation reverberates within a unique sociohistorical context and information infrastructure. Through the lens of Twitter and WeChat — two widely used platforms — this thesis analyzes and characterizes the nature of discourse and misinformation for immigrant Chinese American communities during the 2020 U.S. election. Approximately 1 million tweets were scraped, and more than 50 articles on WeChat were read. Focusing on a subset of Chinese Americans who are largely foreign-born, educated, and middle-upper class, this thesis finds that discussions of Donald Trump and conservative narratives largely dominated political discourse on Twitter and WeChat during the study period. Topics circulated in the Chinese language often touched subjects of unique interest to the group, like the Chinese Communist Party or Hong Kong, while the linked sources were overwhelmingly unreliable, divisive, or conspiratorial. On WeChat, different narratives pushed false and divisive messages around coverage of two of the year’s most important political events: Black Lives Matter and election integrity. This study finds that mis- and disinformation during the 2020 election affected democracy for immigrant Chinese Americans by undermining three democratic goods: self-determination, accountable representation, and public deliberation.
Parent-child acculturation discrepancy, parental knowledge, peer deviance, and adolescent delinquency in Chinese immigrant families
(2011-05) Wang, Yijie, active 21st century; Kim, Su Yeong; Anderson, Edward; Hazen-Swann, Nancy
Using a longitudinal sample of Chinese immigrant families, the current study examined parent-child acculturation discrepancy as an ongoing risk factor for delinquency, through the mediating pathway of parental knowledge of the child’s daily experiences relating to child’s contact with deviant peers. Based on the absolute difference in acculturation levels (tested separately for Chinese and American orientations) between adolescents and parents, one parent in each family was assigned to the “more discrepant” group of parent-child dyads, and the other parent was assigned to the “less discrepant” group of parent-child dyads. To explore possible within-family variations, the mediating pathways were tested separately among the more and less discrepant groups. Within each group, the mediating pathway was further compared between father- and mother-adolescent dyads from different families. Structural equation modeling showed that the proposed mediating pathways were significant only in the more discrepant parent-adolescent dyads. For more discrepant dyads, especially those discrepant in American orientation, a high level of parent-child acculturation discrepancy is related to less parental knowledge, which is related to adolescents having more contact with deviant peers, which in turn leads to more adolescent delinquency. This mediating pathway is significant concurrently, within early and middle adolescence, and longitudinally, from early to middle adolescence. Among the more discrepant dyads, the relationship between parent-child acculturation discrepancy and parental knowledge was stronger for father-adolescent dyads than it was for mother-adolescent dyads.
The perception and knowledge of cardiovascular risk factors among Chinese Americans
(2006-08) Yu, Teng-Yuan; Clark, Angela P.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate Chinese Americans’ perceptions and knowledge about cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and to determine if acculturation has systematic effects on perception of illness. Perception about the cause, seriousness, curability, and controllability of CVD were investigated. Relationships between the demographic characteristics of the participants and cardiovascular knowledge and perception were examined. The conceptual framework for this study was based on Leventhal’s (1970, 1984) Common Sense Model of Illness Representation. The influence of Kleinman’s Explanatory Model about the cultural and social consideration of illness representation was incorporated. A cross-sectional design was selected for this descriptive study with a convenience sampling technique. The target population was community-based Chinese Americans who live in the United States. Data collection was conducted using the Internet to access a population. The sample of the study was comprised of 124 adults with 68% being female. The majority of participants retained a high Asian identity. Participants identified Chinese over English for speaking, reading, writing preferences. Instruments included the Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised (IPQ-R), Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (SL-ASIA) and the Healthy Heart IQ. Findings included the following: the IPQ-R subscales were intercorrelated in a logical manner. Illness perceptions correlated positively with each other but were negatively correlated with optimistic perceptions like personal and treatment control. No difference was observed in the IPQ-R based on age, gender or educational level. Knowledge of CVD among Chinese Americans was lower than the general population. The level of acculturation had an impact on the illness perception. Acculturation level was significantly related to all seven illness perception dimensions of illness representation on the IPQ-R. There were significant relationships between acculturation level and knowledge of CVD. However, due to the low acculturation level presented by majority of participants, caution must be exercised in the interpretation of the study findings. The findings of this study have important implications for nursing practice, education, and theory. These results also provide directions for future research. Suggestions for health care professionals who care for patients with ethnic cultural backgrounds were given.