Examining #StopAsianHate discourse on Twitter using framing and thematic analyses: Focusing on motivational framing with express behaviour upon the 2021 Atlanta shootings

Abstract

In separate events on March 16, 2021, an armed man walked into a spa and a massage parlour in Atlanta and shot eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descendant. Within the first week of the Atlanta shootings, more than 400,000 tweets with the hashtag #StopAsianHate emerged in response to the violence. To highlight the importance of this issue, this current study analyses 5,146 English tweets with #StopAsianHate using social movement framing. Analysis of tweets using Thematic analysis shows that proponents of the AAPI community used diagnostic framing to situate the incident in the context of systematic racial discrimination against AAPI, used prognostic framing to suggest "what" to do to resolve the problem, and used motivational framing to share action words to encourage others and to encouraging political engagements. Findings also show that other than the social movement framing, actors expressed many emotions to show their support and gave immediate reactions in response to significant events as they occurred in relation to the hate crimes. Future studies should examine whether these findings are unique to AAPI members, online social movements, or the topic of racial hate crime.