Mediating the boundaries

Abstract

This article builds on media use scholarship by focusing on an understudied population, second-generation Korean American adolescents, and their use of transnational media. The primary findings are that second-generation Korean Americans use transnational media as cultural resources through which they construct ‘new ethnicities’ that are situated at the borders of their identities as members of the Korean diaspora whose everyday experiences are rooted in their status as marginalized racialized ethnic minorities in the US. Second-generation Korean Americans build inter-ethnic boundaries to create a unique identity that separates themselves from the controlling gaze of dominant culture and to build intra-ethnic boundaries to differentiate between authentic and inauthentic Korean Americans. To do so, they draw on knowledge of Korean popular culture as it comes to be known through transnational Korean media. Finally, their use of Korean media is also influenced by their local views of gender and, in particular, masculinity.

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