Unpacking Whiteness and Racialization in Engineering: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Social Media Posts

Joel Alejandro Mejia; M. Sidury Christiansen

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Engineering Inclusivity: Challenging Disparities and Cultivating Resilience in Education
Tagged Divisions: Equity and Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48210

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Paper Authors

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Joel Alejandro Mejia The University of Texas at San Antonio orcid.org/0000-0003-3908-9930

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Dr. Joel Alejandro (Alex) Mejia is an Associate Professor with joint appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering and the Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies at The University of Texas at San Antonio. His research has contributed to the integration of critical theoretical frameworks in engineering education to investigate deficit ideologies and their impact on minoritized communities, particularly Mexican Americans and Latinos/as/xs in the Southwest United States. Through his work, he analyzes and describes the assets, tensions, contradictions, and cultural collisions many Latino/a/x students experience in engineering through testimonios. He is particularly interested in approaches that contribute to a more expansive understanding of engineering in sociocultural contexts, the impact of critical consciousness in engineering practice, and the development and implementation of culturally responsive pedagogies in engineering education.

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M. Sidury Christiansen The University of Texas at San Antonio

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Abstract

Engineering identity has long been influenced by the persistent presence of whiteness within the field, shaping perceptions, norms, and ideals (Tonso, 2007). Engineering, as a field and a profession, has been historically dominated by a predominantly white, male demographic. This dominance has not only perpetuated stereotypes and biases within the field but has also influenced the way engineering identities are constructed and perceived. Social media platforms, as a contemporary medium for discourse, provide a rich source of data for understanding how these constructions manifest in the digital age. Social media posts facilitate the messaging of stereotypes (Dobson & Knezevic, 2018) including gender stereotypes as well as shaping and regulating identities (Dracket et al., 2018).This study seeks to examine the implications of this phenomenon by employing a multimodal discourse analysis (Kress & Bezemer, 2023; Kress, 2010) of social media posts, particularly memes. Memes are “units of popular culture that are circulated, imitated, and transformed by individual Internet users, creating a shared cultural experience in the process” (Shifman, 2013, p. 367). Our goal is to illuminate how the construction of engineering identity, often unintentionally, perpetuates an exclusionary framework that is difficult for individuals from diverse backgrounds to access, while simultaneously fostering a utopian idealization of engineering identities that are often harmful and unattainable.

Our analysis delves into memes to uncover how engineering identities are portrayed, celebrated, and even idealized. We selected the top 100 memes from an advanced search in Google Chrome using the terms “engineering memes” to retrieve the data for analysis for this paper. Through these portrayals in social media, we examined how the persistence of whiteness in engineering is represented in these multimodal artifacts, while simultaneously uncovering the forms in which racialization is often constructed in these discourses. To this end, we employ a racionlinguistic lens (Alim et al., 2016; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa, 2019) to analyze how these representations encompass not just gender but also linguistic and racial stereotyping depicting the “other” (i.e., non-white heterosexual, standard English speaker male) as powerless, inadequate, or deficient. By employing a multimodal approach for the analysis and a raciolinguistic lens, we consider not only the textual content of posts but also the visual and interactive elements, acknowledging that identity construction in the digital age is a multifaceted endeavor.

Our research reveals the possible consequences of these identity constructions. By idealizing a specific, often homogenous, engineering identity, we risk excluding individuals from diverse backgrounds who do not fit this mold. This exclusionary conceptualization of engineering can deter minoritized groups from pursuing careers in engineering and hinder the advancement of diversity within the field. Ultimately, our study seeks to shed light on the complexities of constructing an engineering identity in a world where whiteness has long been the norm and racialization is often ignored. By unpacking the ways in which engineering identities are limited by this persistence of whiteness, we aim to encourage a more inclusive and diverse understanding of what it means to be or become an engineer.

References

Alim, H. S., Rickford, J. R., & Ball, A. F. (Eds.). (2016). Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. Oxford University Press. Dobson, K., & Knezevic, I. (2018). “Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That!”: Framing and Stereotyping in Legacy and Social Media. Canadian Journal of Communication, 43(3), 381–397. https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2018v43n3a3378 Drakett, J., Rickett, B., Day, K., & Milnes, K. (2018). Old jokes, new media – Online sexism and constructions of gender in Internet memes. Feminism & Psychology, 28(1), 109–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353517727560 Flores, N. L., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171. Kress, G., & Bezemer, J. (2023). Multimodal discourse analysis. In J. P. Gee & M. Handford (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 139-155). Routledge. Kress, G. R. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Taylor & Francis. Rosa, J. (2019). Looking like a language, sounding like a race: Raciolinguistic ideologies and the learning of Latinidad. Oxford University Press. Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(3), 362–377. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12013 Tonso, K. L. (2007). On the outskirts of engineering: Learning identity, gender, and power via engineering practice. Sense Publishers.

Citation
Format

Mejia, J. A., & Christiansen, M. S. (2024, June), Unpacking Whiteness and Racialization in Engineering: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Social Media Posts Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/48210

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Engineering identity has long been influenced by the persistent presence of whiteness within the field, shaping perceptions, norms, and ideals (Tonso, 2007). Engineering, as a field and a profession, has been historically dominated by a predominantly white, male demographic. This dominance has not only perpetuated stereotypes and biases within the field but has also influenced the way engineering identities are constructed and perceived. Social media platforms, as a contemporary medium for discourse, provide a rich source of data for understanding how these constructions manifest in the digital age. Social media posts facilitate the messaging of stereotypes (Dobson &amp;amp; Knezevic, 2018) including gender stereotypes as well as shaping and regulating identities (Dracket et al., 2018).This study seeks to examine the implications of this phenomenon by employing a multimodal discourse analysis (Kress &amp;amp; Bezemer, 2023; Kress, 2010) of social media posts, particularly memes.  Memes are “units of popular culture that are circulated, imitated, and transformed by individual Internet users, creating a shared cultural experience in the process” (Shifman, 2013, p. 367). Our goal is to illuminate how the construction of engineering identity, often unintentionally, perpetuates an exclusionary framework that is difficult for individuals from diverse backgrounds to access, while simultaneously fostering a utopian idealization of engineering identities that are often harmful and unattainable.

Our analysis delves into memes to uncover how engineering identities are portrayed, celebrated, and even idealized. We selected the top 100 memes from an advanced search in Google Chrome using the terms “engineering memes” to retrieve the data for analysis for this paper. Through these portrayals in social media, we examined how the persistence of whiteness in engineering is represented in these multimodal artifacts, while simultaneously uncovering the forms in which racialization is often constructed in these discourses. To this end, we employ a racionlinguistic lens (Alim et al., 2016; Flores &amp;amp; Rosa, 2015; Rosa, 2019) to analyze how these representations encompass not just gender but also linguistic and racial stereotyping depicting the “other” (i.e., non-white heterosexual, standard English speaker male) as powerless, inadequate, or deficient. By employing a multimodal approach for the analysis and a raciolinguistic lens, we consider not only the textual content of posts but also the visual and interactive elements, acknowledging that identity construction in the digital age is a multifaceted endeavor.

Our research reveals the possible consequences of these identity constructions. By idealizing a specific, often homogenous, engineering identity, we risk excluding individuals from diverse backgrounds who do not fit this mold. This exclusionary conceptualization of engineering can deter minoritized groups from pursuing careers in engineering and hinder the advancement of diversity within the field. Ultimately, our study seeks to shed light on the complexities of constructing an engineering identity in a world where whiteness has long been the norm and racialization is often ignored. By unpacking the ways in which engineering identities are limited by this persistence of whiteness, we aim to encourage a more inclusive and diverse understanding of what it means to be or become an engineer. 

References

Alim, H. S., Rickford, J. R., &amp;amp; Ball, A. F. (Eds.). (2016). Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. Oxford University Press. 
Dobson, K., &amp;amp; Knezevic, I. (2018). “Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That!”: Framing and Stereotyping in Legacy and Social Media. Canadian Journal of Communication, 43(3), 381–397. https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2018v43n3a3378
Drakett, J., Rickett, B., Day, K., &amp;amp; Milnes, K. (2018). Old jokes, new media – Online sexism and constructions of gender in Internet memes. Feminism &amp;amp; Psychology, 28(1), 109–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353517727560
Flores, N. L., &amp;amp; Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171. 
Kress, G., &amp;amp; Bezemer, J. (2023). Multimodal discourse analysis. In J. P. Gee &amp;amp; M. Handford (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 139-155). Routledge. 
Kress, G. R. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Taylor &amp;amp; Francis. 
Rosa, J. (2019). Looking like a language, sounding like a race: Raciolinguistic ideologies and the learning of Latinidad. Oxford University Press. 
Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(3), 362–377. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12013 
Tonso, K. L. (2007). On the outskirts of engineering: Learning identity, gender, and power via engineering practice. Sense Publishers. 


AU  - Joel Alejandro Mejia
AU  - M. Sidury Christiansen
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Unpacking Whiteness and Racialization in Engineering: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Social Media Posts
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/48210
ER  -