Twenty-third International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a rise of xenophobia in online communities has triggered scapegoating behaviors against Asian groups. Negative connotations along with xenophobic sentiments in public opinion have placed them in a vulnerable position to suffer from social inequalities, discrimination, and hatred. How is this xenophobic sentiment counteracted online and what can the online social networks do to efficiently spread the anti-xenophobic sentiments? This study explores the two different approaches in the online social media platforms to achieve this anti-xenophobic purpose: campaigns organized by authorities and decentralized social movements. To explore and improve the efficacy of both anti-xenophobic campaigns and movements, this study requests data from Twitter, constructs and visualizes the sentiment spreading networks, and quantitatively analyzes their structures and contents. By referring to the “I Am Not A Virus” movement and “I Still Believe In Our City” campaign, this study discloses the patterns behind network outreach, discusses the uses of technology affordances in building social networks, identifies catalyzing factors for both approaches, and finally explores the potential capacity of online collective actions. The study finds that opinion leaders are essential in promoting anti-xenophobic sentiments, while individual involvement sustains and stabilizes the spread. Additionally, external events to cause responses from online communities also trigger more outreach to a larger audience. This study is concludes with a detailed and comprehensive technical review on how to combine the beneficial factors to improve the anti-xenophobic sentiment spreading of campaigns and movements online.