person
Evelyn Mei
Evelyn (Wenjie) Mei is a community leader and technologist focusing on ethical AI for racial unity. She passionately engages and advocates for the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through events, policy and civic education as an Emerging Civic Leader at the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute, and a Board Member of the Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club.
Evelyn mentors, speaks and leads workshops on technology and AI. She is a Professional Mentor at TechWomen, a US Department of State initiative, and a frequent speaker and mentor at AI4ALL and hackathons.
Evelyn created Negotiation Villain, an AI-based zero-cost negotiation trainer approved by OpenAI. She also launched 2 AI-based software products for sustainable supply chain management. Presently, Evelyn is a Senior Product Strategy Manager at Oracle. Evelyn graduated from the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.
Fellowship Impact: “Analyzing Patterns in News Coverage of Anti-Asian Racism and Response“
Evelyn’s team tries to uncover the full range of racism experienced and how racism is intersecting with other forms of injustice. Their goal is to make news media and news recommender systems aware of existing issues, and work with them to elevate the voice of minorities as agents of change, recognizing their unique experiences and their grassroots efforts.
Evelyn’s research team found out that –
US news media gave disproportionate attention to
- Racism over community efforts
Community actions by Asian Americans, which include solidarity, coalition, education and art responses, were not getting as much media attention. Asian Americans were more often victimized than empowered by the media.
- Politician statements over Asian American experiences
Around 70% of content in the media were statements made by individuals, politicians, activists, and organizations (including both racist statements and denouncements of hate). U.S. news media paid substantial attention to what people said about the issue rather than those who are experiencing it.
- Physical harassment over verbal harassment
Physical harassment incidents, on average, received twice the coverage of verbal harassment incidents.
- Male victims over female victims
On average, women victims received 37% less media attention than male victims. Anti-asian racism intersects with gender inequality.
The above analysis was conducted based on Virulent Hate’s collection of news articles that mentioned the topic of anti-Asian racism published between January 1 and December 31, 2020.
Here, Evelyn would like to give her sincere gratitude to her team members: Poojit Hegde and Jocelyn Quintero, who were Stanford CSRE Tech and Racial Justice Fellows; Qilian Wu, student at UC Santa Cruz; and The Virulent Hate Project, led by Dr. Melissa May Borja and Jake Gibson, whose partnership was crucial to the success of the project.