Transnational Disinformation Networks and Asian Diasporic Politics

FAIN: DOC-293834-24

Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL 61801-3620)
Rachel Kuo (Project Director: February 2023 to present)
Mark Calaguas (Co Project Director: June 2023 to present)
Leezel Tanglao (Co Project Director: April 2024 to present)

Research and oral history workshops supporting the publication of a book analyzing the circulation of misinformation among Asian and Asian-American community digital communication networks.  

Transnational Disinformation Networks and Asian Diasporic Politics is a collaborative project between Dr. Rachel Kuo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Mark Calaguas (Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment and the Filipino Young Leaders Program). We bring together archival research and community oral histories to examine memory, political histories, and information networks across Asian and Asian American diasporas. We seek to understand how lived experiences of trauma, war, colonialism, and political suppression and social and cultural hierarchies of power undergird the spread of mis- and disinformation. We plan to host community storytelling workshops to train community volunteers to collect intergenerational and multilingual oral histories. By focusing on historical and geopolitical frameworks, our project intervenes in contemporary debates about mis- and disinformation, technology, and democracy.