ABSTRACT
Media, as a major social institution, play an important role in “world-making”. This chapter explores how Chinese Canadian youth perceive Western media representation of Chinese community and how those perceptions affect their identity construction in Canadian society. Specifically, it discusses three themes of under- and misrepresentation in the media field, including absence and inauthentic presence; slanted eyes; and foreigners' threat. It argues that media-initiated symbolic violence not only reproduces and reinforces racism institutionally and systemically but also individually, which contributes to the evolvement of a racialized habitus among Chinese Canadian youth. It affects their construction of a positive Chinese identity, and at the same time, their perceptions as “real” Canadians in the country that they view as home.
