Multi-dimensional Racism Classification during COVID-19: Stigmatization, Offensiveness, Blame, and Exclusion

TL;DR

This study introduces a multi-dimensional model for detecting different forms of racism on social media during COVID-19, using BERT and topic modeling to analyze subtle racist behaviors and their evolution over time.

Contribution

It develops a novel multi-dimensional racism detection framework based on social science theories, enhancing understanding of racist discourse during COVID-19.

Findings

Identifies four dimensions of racism: stigmatization, offensiveness, blame, and exclusion.

Analyzes the dynamics of racist topics across different COVID-19 stages.

Provides insights for targeted intervention strategies.

Abstract

Transcending the binary categorization of racist texts, our study takes cues from social science theories to develop a multi-dimensional model for racism detection, namely stigmatization, offensiveness, blame, and exclusion. With the aid of BERT and topic modeling, this categorical detection enables insights into the underlying subtlety of racist discussion on digital platforms during COVID-19. Our study contributes to enriching the scholarly discussion on deviant racist behaviours on social media. First, a stage-wise analysis is applied to capture the dynamics of the topic changes across the early stages of COVID-19 which transformed from a domestic epidemic to an international public health emergency and later to a global pandemic. Furthermore, mapping this trend enables a more accurate prediction of public opinion evolvement concerning racism in the offline world, and meanwhile, the enactment of specified intervention strategies to combat the upsurge of racism during the global public health crisis like COVID-19. In addition, this interdisciplinary research also points out a direction for future studies on social network analysis and mining. Integration of social science perspectives into the development of computational methods provides insights into more accurate data detection and analytics.