Representation of People of Asian Descent in Mainstream Mass Media within the United States

Abstract

The public school classroom in the United States has been getting more diverse, linguistically and ethnically. Immigrant and second/third generation students learn American culture and norms from messages conveyed through mainstream media like internet, advertisements, films, newspapers, TV, and magazines. Their self-perceptions, perspectives toward others, attitudes toward classroom, school, and society are strongly influenced by the representations of diverse ethnic groups in mainstream media whether they are true or false. This study reviews three main stereotypical representations of one minority category in the U.S., the people of Asian descent, in U.S. mainstream media in the past- yellow peril, yellowface, and model minority. And then, this study focuses more on recent years to examine whether there are any changes or differences over the last 5 years compared to past decades with the content analysis of Time, Vogue, and Esquire from 2005 to 2010. The findings of this study indicate that model minority and yellow peril stereotypes still exist. Compared to model minority and yellow peril stereotypes, it was hard to find evidence of the yellowface in the advertisements and articles analyzed. The biggest problem this study found is that images of Asian descendants in the U.S. in mass media were still extremely rare.