2025 Theses Doctoral

Traveling with Asian American Gen Z Youth: Constructing Otherwise Identities in, through, and across Digital Spaces

Stahl, Catherine Yanan Cheng

This dissertation seeks to understand how six Asian American Gen Z youth navigate digital spaces to construct, craft, and negotiate their identities against a backdrop of narrative scarcity and the complex politics of (in)visibility. Through a nine-month digital ethnography employing multimodal, participatory methods, this work “travels with youth” into their digital lifeworlds, revealing the nuanced practices by which they mobilize digital tools, platforms, and artifacts to author and perform complex, multi-layered identities. Framed by the theories of figured worlds and intersectionality, the study asks two central questions: How are Asian American Gen Z youth today navigating digital spaces to construct and craft expansive identities? What are the ways they mobilize digital tools and platforms to speak back to, refuse, and sometimes reproduce the stereotypes and dominant narratives shaping who they ought to be?

The study foregrounds a paradox central to these young people’s lived experiences: they inhabit a persistent liminal space marked by both invisibility and hypervisibility. On one hand, Asian American Gen Z youth remain unseen in their multiplicity; on the other hand, they are subjected to heightened scrutiny through racialized and gendered lenses. This dissonance is particularly evident among youth embodying queer, Southeast Asian, biracial, adopted, and/or later-generation identifications, illuminating the internal diversity and power dynamics that shape identity experiences within Asian American communities.

The findings suggest that digital spaces are not reducible to binaries of danger or liberation. Instead, they function as intricate ecosystems where cultural artifacts and personal narratives intersect to create critical social arenas for belonging, cultural preservation, and identity (re)construction. In these digital figured worlds, Asian American youth actively negotiate visibility politics—crafting opportunities for self-representation, interrupting silences, and contesting omissions in dominant discourses of youth experiences.

Ultimately, this dissertation contributes to the fields of youth studies, digital research methodology, and digital literacy by demonstrating how Asian American Gen Z youth craft complex intersectional identities and expand the narrative plenitude of Asian American youth experiences. Collectively, their stories not only nuance conventional discourses of youth activities within digital spaces but also highlight the ongoing, evolving process of identity-making that arises from inhabiting increasingly digital social spheres—a process that is as complex as it is transformative.