Participate in the Study
We invite volunteers who self-identify as Asian Americans, including East, Southeast, South, and West, multi-ethnic and diasporic identities, who were born and raised in the U.S. or migrated to the U.S. before the age of 12.
After a 90-minute training workshop, volunteers will conduct at least one interview with a family member, loved one, or community member about news, social media use, and personal history and participate in a focus group to discuss findings. The total amount of time for participation will be at least 5 hours over the course of around two weeks.
Upcoming Trainings:
Tuesday, August 2
5:30 - 7:00 pm est
Community Engagement
We work with community organizations to host public education and skills-building workshops about mis- and disinformation in Asian and Asian American communities that also introduce people to the research study.
Upcoming Events
August 2, 2022 | General Research Training & On-boarding Workshop
Past Events
October 17, 2021 | North Carolina Asian Americans Together, The Root of the Problem: Taking Action on Mis/Disinformation Across Generations in Asian Communities
October 22, 2021 | Duke University Program in Asian American & Diasporic Studies, A Conversation on Misinformation in Asian Diaspora Communities
October 27, 2021 | Duke University Program in Asian American & Diasporic Studies, Research Workshop on Transnational and Intergenerational Histories of Information
Research Process
So, what happens during the study?
You will attend a 90-minute orientation to the research project in the form of a training and skills-building workshop. This training workshop on-boards volunteers into research protocols, including consent and note-taking and best practices for interviewing. After attending this workshop, you will receive an anonymized volunteer ID number as well as access to the research toolkit and forms. You will have around two weeks after the initial orientation to schedule and conduct this interview and upload notes.
After the interview is completed, you will fill out a summary form of reflections and notes synthesize what you have learned from the interview experience. You can use your audio recording as a reference.
Once the interview is completed, you will upload the interview material, such as notes, audio recording, and/or transcripts.
After conducting the interview and uploading your materials, you will attend a follow-up focus group session with around 4-5 other participants to discuss and reflect on your findings. This is also an important chance for us to clarify any questions we have about your interview summary form. Attending the focus group is mandatory as part of completing research interviewer responsibility. We will send study incentives only after completion of all of these steps.
Why this process?
Our project emphasizes a relational study using intimate family and community information networks. Asian America’ is a vast diasporic umbrella with a diverse array of linguistic and cultural backgrounds and histories across local and transnational geographies. A holistic study across communities requires a methodological process and framework that can account for community-based differences across platforms, cultural contexts, languages, and histories. In other words, this research requires depth and breadth difficult to achieve by any individual research group or organization.
Having a qualitative process that draws on multiple lived experiences also helps address several challenges in studying mis/disinformation across diasporic communities.
Information spreads transnationally across multiple platforms, ranging from ethnic language and non-U.S. based news sources, to Facebook and YouTube, to messaging apps such as WeChat, LINE, KaKao, and WhatsApp.
Access—these platforms vary by ethnic community and pulling information from closed networks in messaging apps is nearly impossible without some degree of trust and intimacy.
This research also requires some degree of non-English language proficiency, or resources for translation and interpretation.
Mis- and disinformation within different communities often has culturally and historically specific connotations that require contextualization. A relational study offers a better understanding what various communities are facing (as many of these information and organizing networks are siloed).
The process of conducting this research will also support building capacity and resources for having polarizing and difficult conversations about politics with loved ones as well as community skills-building in conducting oral histories.
Questions? Please contact us!