Association of “#covid19” Versus “#chinesevirus” With Anti-Asian Sentiments on Twitter: March 9–23, 2020

Authored by ajph.aphapublications.org and submitted by mvea

Objectives. To examine the extent to which the phrases, “COVID-19” and “Chinese virus” were associated with anti-Asian sentiments.

Methods. Data were collected from Twitter’s Application Programming Interface, which included the hashtags “#covid19” or “#chinesevirus.” We analyzed tweets from March 9 to 23, 2020, corresponding to the week before and the week after President Donald J. Trump’s tweet with the phrase, “Chinese Virus.” Our analysis focused on 1 273 141 hashtags.

Results. One fifth (19.7%) of the 495 289 hashtags with #covid19 showed anti-Asian sentiment, compared with half (50.4%) of the 777 852 hashtags with #chinesevirus. When comparing the week before March 16, 2020, to the week after, there was a significantly greater increase in anti-Asian hashtags associated with #chinesevirus compared with #covid19 (P < .001).

Conclusions. Our data provide new empirical evidence supporting recommendations to use the less-stigmatizing term “COVID-19,” instead of “Chinese virus.” (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print March 18, 2021: e1–e9. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306154)

somethingstrang on March 20th, 2021 at 16:54 UTC »

Prejudice denial is so bizarre given that society has consistently demonstrated increased prejudice during significant events.

Against Native Americans during colonialism

Against Blacks during the civil rights movement, amongst others

Against the Japanese during WW2

Against the Muslims during 9/11

Against gays during the gay rights movement

Against Mexicans (Rapist and Murderers) during the Trump elections

But during Covid-19? Nah, it’s impossible.

EDIT: Yes I realize I missed a lot of events that should be in this list. Sorry

somethingstrang on March 20th, 2021 at 16:46 UTC »

“In addition, we did not code hashtags targeted to the Chinese government and conspiracy theories as anti-Asian. We took this approach because some hashtags are used to categorize information (e.g., curate a list of theories related the pandemic’s origins). This likely made our analyses more conservative by underestimating antipathy directed toward Asians.”

TeamDoubleDown on March 20th, 2021 at 14:26 UTC »

How do you control for bots retweeting in this study?