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Empowering Native Hawaiian And Pacific Islander Communities Through Social Media Essay

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Empowering Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Communities Through Social Media The prevalence of social media has given a platform to any individual with a cell phone and completely changed the way we communicate. The digital space created by billions of users has partially replaced the physical spaces previously used for public discourse. For this essay, I will focus on how this platform has given marginalized communities the space and empowered them to challenge stereotypes, participate in activism, and build communities. Building on the findings of Delfino (Delfino 2021) and Darvin (Darvin 2022), I will show how Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities are using social media to empower their communities, educate younger …show more content…

The lack of diversity in these fields has created systemic issues such as healthcare disparities (Shen et al. 2018; Saha et al. 2000; Meghani et al. 2009). NHPI individuals have been historically underrepresented in STEM fields and are the result of systemic and cultural barriers (Tachine et al. 2017; Kerr et al. 2018). However, in the past few years, NHPI groups have turned to social media to change the narratives surrounding the lack of representation in STEM and empower younger NHPI generations to insert themselves into these spaces. Pacific Islanders Encouraging Fun, Engineering, Science & Technology (PIEFEST) is a 501(c)(3) organization based in California that holds STEM fairs and uses social media to cultivate interest in STEM fields for NHPI students (PIEFEST ). A key example of the empowerment used by PIEFEST is #MataiosMakerMondays on Instagram (IG). The use of the Samoan language with “Mataio” gives NHPI communities an avenue to reclaim their power and agency (Tuafuti and McCaffery 2005; Reyhner 2010). This translingual practice directly challenges the English hegemony in a predominantly white space (Darvin 2022). As Darvin (ibid) observed, these translingual practices create a sense of belonging that is necessary for NHPI to be empowered. The ability for NHPI to navigate the different cultural spaces involved in this example provides the opportunity to find …show more content…

Other groups and influencers on social media made preservation of language, customs, and traditions their primary objective. @samoanmadeeasy is the most popular social media account that focuses on language revitalization (Samoan Made Easy (@samoanmadeeasy) ). The intended audience of this group is the younger generation of NHPI, typically second or third-generation who grew up further removed from NHPI culture than their parents or grandparents. As we have seen throughout this course, language and cultural identity are deeply interconnected and are a vital aspect of cultural connection and survivability (Gonzalez et al. 2017; Chiblow and Meighan 2022; Basso 1996; Albury 2018). The cultural space created by these groups contribute to a personal sense of pride among younger generations and provide them the space to digitally build a

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