Search Algorithms as Revealing of Social Stereotypes

I performed the original google image search just on "Asian women," "American women," and "Asian American women" for a presentation on stereotypes and identities of Asian American Youth. I want to demonstrate the pervasive stereotypes of Asian women – just how hyper-hyper sexualized they are. And it’s interesting to show that when you Google image search – there is no hierarchies of approval that the images have to go through like for traditional media (newspapers, TV shows and etc, where images usually become racialized in the approval process. SO for Google searches – it’s just based on algorithms on what users are clicking through and page ranking based on how many sites point to the webpage - which all determines the relevancy of the answers to the search query.
But just a simple google search can show the stereotypes that exist out there – based on the distribution of what internet users are clicking, pointing and linking to.
There is not other “RACE” or groups that are as sexualized as the generic “Asian woman.” Latina comes the closest. You can see for “Arab women” you can plenty of images of the stereotypes veiled woman. Then other during the presentation prompted me to type in “Korean, Japanese, black, African American, and etc.” = and as you can see “Asian women” win the most sexualized google image search. When you perform the search based on more specific cultures – like “Dominican” - it’s not as sexualized as “Latina.” Same for when you search “Japanese” - it’s not as sexualized as “Asian.” Sometimes sweeping stereotypes are easier for mass groupings of people – differences can be dropped as common denominators can be promoted.

In the rest of my presentation - my goal was to show that Asian American youth are divided in terms of genders - where the males are depicted as either hypersexual gay toys or asexual book worms, and for women they are depicted as hyper-sexual submissive and dominating sex freaks or as the model minority book worm.
But as Asian American youth are developing their identities as Asian AND American - they are trying to get away from the two extremes of stereotypes. However this identification process has usually located Asian youth as super glorious study bugs who go off to universities OR Asian youth as creating their own enclaves/communities b.c they have been excluded from the dominant majority (white america). Well I think this depiction is bullshit. I don’t think this process is as clean and bipolar as it has been depicted. Their identity negotiation is an ongoing process, and in the backdrop is this resisting and processing of existing stereotypes – and it doesn’t’ always mean that Asian American youth DON’t ADOPT these stereotypes either. BUT I don’t like the way Asian American youth have been depicted – as strong resisters of assimilation, forging their own hybrid path in a dignified glorious way. Asian American youth don’t have a special smart or honoring their traditions gene – they like every other immigrant youth group after the 3rd/4th generation start showing many similar patterns of acculturation.
click on the set to see the other see the other google searches I referred - or try your own google image search!
www.flickr.com/photos/triciawang/sets/72157594387522349/