Each year a small portion of AoIR conference fees go toward several Kelly Quinn Travel Scholarships for junior scholars to attend the conference. We want to recognize our scholarship recipients and share with you a little bit about them and their research interests.
Who are you?
My name is Jane Yeahin Pyo, and I am a Postdoctoral Fellow of Digital Politics and Race at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. At UMass, I am the Inaugural Postdoc of the Global Technology for Social Justice (GloTech) Lab, and currently serve my role as the Community Lead. I received my PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023.
Where are you from?
Currently, I live in the United States, in the Northeast. I’m originally from a city called Ilsan in South Korea.
What is your current area of study?
My interdisciplinary research brings together media studies, critical technology studies, and global studies. I bring critical and global perspectives to how digital media technology impacts and shapes our democratic and civic life. Specifically, I look at digital politics, global technology, disinformation, and the Asian American race.
Describe the research you will present at AoIR2024.
I contribute to the AoIR 2024 conference in two ways: paper presentation and fishbowl panel.
The paper I present with my collaborator, entitled “TikTok Teach-ins: Asian American creators promoting Black-Asian solidarity,” sheds an important light on Asian American communities and their new modes of resistance against racism on the TikTok platform. Adopting qualitative methods, we delve into how Asian Americans create their own ways to fight against racialized hate that sows conflict among racial minorities. We find that contrary to how activism on TikTok has been seen as “playful,” following its playful platform affordances, Asian American activists use these features (e.g., stitching) for racial justice activism in ways that resemble teach-ins. Their performances are reserved and educational. Responding to the criticism by critical race scholars who have pointed out how Asian bodies, perspectives, and studies have been rendered invisible, our research brings a much-needed focus on what new waves of Asian American online activism look like.
Moreover, I participate as a panelist in a fishbowl session, “Researching Toxic Online Communities in the Academic-Industrial Complex.” I share the intricacies and complexities of researching South Korean left-wing trolls. While in many parts of the world, harassment of journalists is associated with hate groups, trolls, or disinformation actors, in South Korea, the attacks come from citizens frustrated with the strong conservative bias of the powerful mainstream press. Within the context where the political subjectivities of the harasser (repressed citizens)-harassed (journalists as social and political elites) become complicated against the wider social power structure, I ask questions that interrogate the positionality of the researcher, participants, and power dynamics. I also ask questions looking at researchers’ reflexivity, such as “How does my research relations affect me as a researcher and a person?” or “Am I being complicit in the toxic online environment?”
Have you presented at AoIR in the past? If so, what was your experience? If #AoIR2024 in Sheffield is your first AoIR conference, what made you choose this conference? What do you expect from it?
I’ve only presented at the virtual AoIR conference, which, sadly, does not set up the best example. I was thrilled and motivated to present at AoIR 2024 because I have been to AoIR 2023 as an observer, and really enjoyed the vibrant conversations around how to make Internet Research more critical. As a global digital media scholar, I hope to make great connections with global scholars who strive to make Internet Research more global, diverse, and inclusive.
