With the establishment of the 1986 Compact of Free Association (COFA) with the US, citizens from the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, and Palau secured rights to live and work in the US. Currently, over 20,000 COFA citizens live in Hawaiʻi. Beyond cultural and linguistic assimilation obstacles, the community has historically faced systemic challenges including restrictions to social programmes, bias in housing, healthcare, and education, and experiences of discrimination. This paper explores the representation of citizens from COFA nations in Hawaiʻi newspapers, investigating the changing discourses of the community in newspaper articles and the media’s influence on public perceptions from 1980 to the present.

Employing methods used in critical discourse analysis (Wodak & Reisigl 2009), I analyse 8 keywords (and 12 cognates) in Hawaiʻi's three largest newspapers over 42 years. Findings highlight a perpetuation of stereotypes, an underrepresentation in positive news, and a dearth of sociohistorical context. The constructed timeline, spanning from the inception of COFA to now, presents three emergent chronotopic concepts of Micronesia: 1) Illusory Micronesia, an abstract, imagined realm suspended in a state of perpetuity; 2) Sacred Micronesia, a portrayal of an untouched, pristine Pacific anchored in a shared historical nostalgia, and 3) Urban Micronesia, barely concealed within the modern-day cityscape, characterized by dependency and othering. The study sheds light on the linguistic practices that may influence attitudes towards Micronesians in Hawaiʻi and the ties between discursive shifts and wider sociocultural transformations (Foucault 1982).