Examining Sinophobia and Racialization at the Nexus of News Satire and Public Engagement : The Case of Swedish Television SVT’s Svenska Nyheter News Satire of China in 2018

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims to understand Sinophobia in the context of post-racial, anti-racist and color-blind Sweden, specifically concerning news representations of China and racial caricatures of Chinese and other East-Asians through “Gook humor”. Sinophobia is examined through race humor and public engagement with satirical race representations using the controversial case of news satire of China produced by Swedish public television SVT in 2018. A reflexive thematic analysis is conducted to analyze the news satire as transcripts from a YouTube video, and public engagement as relevant YouTube comments in Swedish. The findings of the analysis are situated within a critical race theoretical framework based on the concept of liquid racism, color-blindness, Yellow Peril narratives and critical humor theories. The result shows that the news satire contains liquid race representations of Chinese as ironic yet exaggerated racial caricatures, while portraying China as a powerful yet threatening authoritarian state, alluding to Yellow Peril narratives. Mediated through humor, these representations implicitly promote liquid racism in public engagement, in which racist interpretations could exist in the context of white liberal anti-racism. This paper coins the term liquid Sinophobia to describe how covert racism has adapted to exist in post-racial and color- blind Sweden by primarily negating accusations of racism by Swedish-Chinese minorities. Explicit Sinophobia was also found in the public engagement rooted in cultural racism, nationalism and counter-PC culture. This thesis has major implication for Sinophobia research in Asian critical race studies in Sweden, being the first of its kind to focus on this topic at the nexus of news satire and public engagement. Further research is required to study liquid Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism based on the general and intersectional experiences of Swedish-Asian communities.