DISCO Network Presents: TikTok, DeepSeek and the Fear of Chinese Tech in Nationalist Times

For the first time, two of the most popular apps in the world – TikTok and the A.I. chatbot DeepSeek – are Chinese. American legislative efforts to restrict or outright ban Chinese apps and other technologies on the grounds of national security have dominated recent headlines. During a time of political turmoil, increasing hostility towards trade with other nations, and the rush to maintain U.S. dominance over the tech industry, anti-Chinese sentiment has (re)surfaced in ways that echo earlier American anxieties about Asian labor competition and racial difference. This panel will bring together Asian American media scholars and culture creators to analyze what this climate means for our shifting technological landscape, Asian American communities, and race relations in the U.S.

Free boba will be provided to the first 100 in-person attendees. All are welcome and we strongly encourage undergraduate and graduate students to attend.

Advance registration is recommended.

Register to attend in person: https://myumi.ch/AZjJG
Register to attend on Zoom: https://myumi.ch/RmG6y

Meet the Panelists

Tara Fickle is an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. Her first book, The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities, (NYU Press, 2019, winner of Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award), explores how games have been used to establish and combat Asian and Asian American racial stereotypes. Fickle’s current research projects include the racialized dimensions of esports, virtual currency harvesting in video games, and a digital archive of the canonical Asian American anthology, Aiiieeeee! She teaches courses on Asian American culture, gaming, comics, and the digital humanities.

Ian Shin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan. He is a historian of the 19th- and 20th-century United States and is interested in how “culture,” broadly defined, reflects but also shapes the politics of its time. His research and teaching concentrate on U.S.-China relations, U.S. empire, immigration, and the Asian American experience. His book manuscript—entitled Imperial Stewards: Chinese Art and the Cultural Origins of America's Pacific Century—examines Chinese art collecting in the U.S. in the early 20th century as a contested process of knowledge production that bolstered ideas of American exceptionalism, even while it relied on transpacific circuits of labor and expertise.

Jeff Yang has been observing, exploring, and writing about the Asian American community for over thirty years. He launched one of the first Asian American national magazines, A. Magazine, in the late nineties and early 2000s, and now writes frequently for CNN, New York Times, and elsewhere. He has authored three books—Jackie Chan’s New York Times bestselling memoir I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action; Once Upon a Time in China, a history of the cinemas of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Mainland; and Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture, and most recently coauthored the New York Times bestselling RISE: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now.

Meet The Moderator

Lisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Culture, and the founding Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Since 1994, Nakamura has written books and articles on digital bodies, race, and gender in online environments, on toxicity in video game culture, and the many reasons that Internet research needs ethnic and gender studies. These books include, Race After the Internet (co-edited with Peter Chow-White, Routledge, 2011); Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Minnesota, 2007); Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet (Routledge, 2002); and Race in Cyberspace (co-edited with Beth Kolko and Gil Rodman, Routledge, 2000). In November 2019, Nakamura gave a TED NYC talk about her research called “The Internet is a Trash Fire. Here’s How to Fix It."

We would like to thank the following co-sponsors:

Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program
Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing
Department of American Culture
Department of Comparative Literature
Department of Film, Television, and Media
Department of History
Department of Political Science
Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies
Program in International and Comparative Studies
School of Information
Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program
Science, Technology, and Society Program

We want to make our events accessible to all participants. CART services will be provided. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate or would like help filling out the RSVP form, please email Giselle Mills at gimills@umich.edu.