From Fear to Hate: How the Covid-19 Pandemic Sparks Racial Animus in the United States
Runjing Lu, Yanying Sheng

TL;DR
The paper investigates how the Covid-19 pandemic triggered increased racial animus against Asians in the US, evidenced by Google searches and Twitter posts, with implications for hate crime prevention.
Contribution
It provides empirical evidence linking Covid-19 diagnosis timing to rises in anti-Asian racial slur usage, highlighting the role of media cues and social media in racial animus.
Findings
Immediate increase in racist searches and tweets after local Covid-19 diagnosis
Racial animus specifically targeted Asians, not other groups
De-emphasizing disease-ethnicity links can reduce racial animus
Abstract
We estimate the effect of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on racial animus, as measured by Google searches and Twitter posts including a commonly used anti-Asian racial slur. Our empirical strategy exploits the plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of the first Covid-19 diagnosis across regions in the United States. We find that the first local diagnosis leads to an immediate increase in racist Google searches and Twitter posts, with the latter mainly coming from existing Twitter users posting the slur for the first time. This increase could indicate a rise in future hate crimes, as we document a strong correlation between the use of the slur and anti-Asian hate crimes using historic data. Moreover, we find that the rise in the animosity is directed at Asians rather than other minority groups and is stronger on days when the connection between the disease and Asians is more…
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Taxonomy
TopicsMedia Influence and Politics · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Social and Intergroup Psychology
