Study: Trump's Virus Slur Caused Anti-Asian Sentiment

There have been nearly 3800 incidents of discrimination against Asian-Americans in the United States in just the last year. While discrimination has existed in the past against them, that number is a huge increase over previous years.

Many of us have thought that Donald Trump's use of terms like "Wuhan virus", "China virus", and "Kung flu" contributed to the increase in anti-Asian sentiment in this country. His use of slurs like that gave racists the encouragement to act on their perverted beliefs.

Now there is a study published in the March 18th edition of The Journal of Public Health that shows it is true.

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

Yulin Hswen ScD, MPH, Xiang Xu MS, Anna Hing MPH, Jared B. Hawkins PhD, John S. Brownstein PhD, and Gilbert C. Gee PhDAuthor affiliations, information, and correspondence details

Accepted: January 03, 2021

 

Published Online: March 18, 2021

 

• Abstract
 
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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)