University of Colorado Boulder associate professor Angie Chuang has won a national book award for her research exploring how U.S. news media coverage determines who deserves to be seen as an American.
Chuang is the 2025 winner of the Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award for her book, "American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Representations of Identity and Belonging."
▶️ WATCH: Denver7's Shannon Ogden discusses the book with Angie Chuang
The book explores how the media creates a perspective that places whiteness at the center of Americanness. Chuang analyzed nine case studies from the past two decades, including mass shootings, protests and legislative battles.
Chuang said she first realized the problem in news coverage during the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. The gunman was Korean-American and had lived in Virginia since he was 8 years old, but in the news, he was repeatedly referred to as a "foreign student."
"Because he had done something horrific, there was a desire to blame it on his foreignness," Chuang said.
"When positive things happened, like a lot of DACA recipients, Dreamers as they were called then, who were featured in the news were valedictorian or future doctors or hard workers, military, they had joined the military — when they had done that, even though they were undocumented, they were Americans," Chuang said.
Kappa Tau Alpha is the national honor society for journalism and mass communication. The Mott award, named for historian and KTA leader Frank Luther Mott, honors the best research-based book about journalism or mass communication published during the year. As the winner, Chuang receives a $1,000 prize and a plaque.
Chuang teaches at CU Boulder’s College of Communication, Media, Design and Information. She previously worked as a reporter for publications including The Oregonian, The Hartford Courant and the Los Angeles Times.
Chuang will be honored at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication national convention in August.
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