Asian Americans today are one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States and, as such, are increasingly seen as a consequential electorate in American elections. While a growing number of scholars have sought to address how this important electorate will take shape in the coming years, James Lai’s Asian American Connective Action in the Age of Social Media offers an informative, detailed portrait of the many complicated layers that characterize Asian American politics in the twenty-first century. Lai focuses on what is now the proverbial “elephant in the room” in the study of political participation: the use of social media to mobilize certain political messages. For Lai, social media can at the same time allow Asian Americans to exert political activism but also exacerbate political disfunction through the spread of misinformation and the production of online echo chambers. In this way, Lai addresses political action on social media head-on by covering ways in which Asian Americans can build productive political networks but also demonstrating how social media can mechanize conservative or nationalistic efforts.

In his analysis of social media activism, Lai offers a number of useful frameworks for approaching what he terms “connective action.” First, Lai argues that we should consider the origination of the network. Social media networks can build organically through “crowd-led networks” or by existing organizational networks that use social media as a tool for mobilization (p. 41). Crowd-led networks drive the majority of the case studies covered in the book. As Lai explains, social media platforms have been particularly good at enabling individuals to connect with one another even without coordination by elites or organizations. In Asian America, the creation of language-based apps allows immigrant communities to share information with one another. Lai’s first framework best conveys what makes social media activism so distinctive from other forms of political communication in that social media allows for the mobilization of grassroots interests. Lai’s book thus portrays why nontraditional forms of political action—such as that which occurs on social media—are a useful approach to gauge the politics of underrepresented or marginalized groups. Asian American political interests may not be highlighted by national news media outlets, but they can be publicly shared across social media networks.

Lai offers a second framework that outlines the key dimensions to online mobilization. He argues that there are three components that intersect with the production of online mobilization: (a) use of shared mediums (i.e., social media platforms), (b) the articulation of shared motivation or goals for collective action, and (c) the geographic location of suburbs as the main site for this type of action. Lai uses these three components as a strategy for organizing each chapter’s discussion. But this framework reveals other, more substantive lessons in regard to the landscape of online activism. The typical scholarly argument is that social media provides an opportunity to generate open political discussion to a wide, possibly international, population. However, as we see in Lai’s book, the data often show that online mobilization tends to be narrower in scope because it often is a medium that taps into existing networks. For Asian American communities, social media often connects members within a specific national origin group, rather than connecting across national origin groups in the formation of a panethnic community or developing cross-racial solidarities. We also see that it is often the case that many of the political topics that gain significant traction on social media for Asian Americans are those of interest to residents of middle-class suburbs, such as affirmative action used in admissions processes at prestigious universities. Given this, Lai acknowledges at the end of the book that social media activism should be understood more as a complement to existing (non-online forms) of political action rather than a completely new or alternative space.

One of the most useful resources that can be taken from this book is the collection of six case studies of recent political activism exercised by Asian Americans. I can foresee that course instructors will be able to use these chapters to stimulate classroom discussions on not only the processes of political mobilization but also the many normative questions taken on in these political debates. This collection of cases appropriately portrays a politically diverse community that holds a range of conservative to progressive political positions. But even more appropriately, these case studies vividly capture the many political conflicts that Asian Americans experience in their racialization as a group triangulated between Whites and Blacks in the racial order. This positionality leads some Asian Americans to express messages in support of existing structures that uphold White privilege, while other Asian Americans attempt to critically challenge the persistent use of Asian bodies as middleman minorities. Take the case study on the trial of police officer Peter Liang, who shot and killed Akai Gurley during a routine search of an apartment building in New York. Liang was originally convicted of second-degree manslaughter and misconduct but was at the same time the only police officer to be convicted in a city with a history of wrongful killings by police officers. Many local Chinese American residents focused solely on the wrongful sentencing of Peter Liang, which in effect ignored the existence of police violence in African American communities, and so came into direct conflict with the Black Lives Matter movement. Lai helps guide the readers to understand how and why the Chinese American community responded the way that it did while pointing to the ways in which efforts by Asian Americans can oftentimes uphold the existing racial order.

Lai uses these cases to help readers better understand the complex modes in which Asian Americans have entered political debates on racial justice in recent years. Existing survey data reports that Asian Americans on the whole support a liberal-leaning political agenda and identify politically as people of color, but Lai’s case studies document the public attention garnered by what is likely a small but vocal contingent of conservative Asian American communities and their political interests. Using social media, these activists have generated strong group identity appeals by claiming to protect coethnics from what are seen as unfair outcomes that result from policies such as affirmative action or data-collection strategies. Herein lies the rub with social media activism: In politics the “loudest” voices often appear as representative of the larger community. So while there exists a small contingent of conservative voters in the Asian American community, social media can offer smaller subgroups a way to publicly voice their political positions. In this way, Lai’s Asian American Connective Action in the Age of Social Media offers important insight into what will be some of the core political tensions for Asian American politics in the twenty-first century.