Warning: symptoms may include racism: a content analysis of anti-Asian racism and sentiment amid the COVID-19 pandemic in digital media

Abstract

This study examined themes present in selected news articles which actively discussed anti-Asian racism and sentiment amid the COVID-19 pandemic. A content analysis was conducted on purposively sampled news articles from various media sources on the search engine, Google, under the “News” section. In total, 20 news articles were examined for how media framed the rise of anti-Asian racism and sentiment during the pandemic. Findings revealed little information on the rise and racialization of the COVID-19 outbreak, but there was a larger tie to the incidents of anti-Asian racism and sentiment and its relationship to the COVID-19 pandemic, the history of racism endemic to North American history, and recent remarks made by President Donald Trump, racializing COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus.”