How COVID-19 has Impacted American Attitudes Toward China: A Study on Twitter

TL;DR

This study uses Twitter data and causal inference methods to show that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased anti-China attitudes among Americans, highlighting the impact of major global events on public opinion.

Contribution

It provides causal evidence that COVID-19 awareness directly influences anti-China sentiments using social media data and rigorous econometric techniques.

Findings

COVID-19 awareness causes a sharp rise in anti-China attitudes

Social media data can reveal causal effects on public opinion

Major global events impact attitudes toward foreign countries

Abstract

Past research has studied social determinants of attitudes toward foreign countries. Confounded by potential endogeneity biases due to unobserved factors or reverse causality, the causal impact of these factors on public opinion is usually difficult to establish. Using social media data, we leverage the suddenness of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine whether a major global event has causally changed American views of another country. We collate a database of more than 297 million posts on the social media platform Twitter about China or COVID-19 up to June 2020, and we treat tweeting about COVID-19 as a proxy for individual awareness of COVID-19. Using regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference estimation, we find that awareness of COVID-19 causes a sharp rise in anti-China attitudes. Our work has implications for understanding how self-interest affects policy preference and how Americans view migrant communities.