Second Generation Media: Examining Progress in South Asian American Media Representation

The goal of this dissertation is to bring the scholarship on South Asian American media representation up to date with the changes in the media industry. I argue that the number of shows, films, and other multimedia content centered on the second generation South Asian American experience warrants a new framework of study that looks beyond the narrow lens of stereotypes grounding most previous research on this topic. I articulate this framework as a genre of South Asian American Second Generation Media (SGM). Drawing from canonical and more current texts of genre studies, I conceive of this genre as the result of new industry practices and technologies, changes in the way South Asian American stories are told on screen, emergent themes in this body of content, and increased audience participation in the articulation of second generation South Asian American media representation. Through close readings of two Netflix shows – Master of None and Never Have I Ever – as well as interviews and focus groups with producers and consumers of South Asian American SGM, I 1) outline the elements of the South Asian American SGM genre, 2) examine the ways in which this emergent content is placed in a white dominant society, and 3) explore what “good” and “progress” in representation means to media makers and audiences. In establishing this genre, I give scholars of immigrant media a timely tool to examine media representation in the digital era.