Online Hate: The New Virus

In their article in this issue, Hohl et al. (p. 646) illustrate the spatiotemporal distribution of geolocated tweets that contain anti-Asian hate language during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research, Hohl et al. discovered, from more than 4 million geolocated tweets collected from Twitter, that clusters of hate appeared to be distributed across the United States. These results expand on previous efforts by showing that, across all geographic regions, there was a high degree of anti-Asian hate perpetuated through the social media platform Twitter. Interestingly, this included the Northeast and the West Coast, both regions that have traditionally appeared supportive of issues related to racial equity and social justice.¹ In the findings presented by Hohl et al., even areas such as New York and California, often considered progressive beacons, experienced clusters of hate against Asians. While potentially humbling, this finding is not entirely surprising, and potentially reflects the deep-seated structural racism that exists across all regions of the country.

ANTI-ASIAN VIOLENCE

Consider, for example, that the New York City Police Department has reported that hate crimes against Asians have increased by more than 360% since the start of the pandemic.² This dramatic increase is reflected through terrifying examples at the individual level. In one of the most egregious examples, a horrendous hate crime that occurred on July 11, 2020, an 89-year-old Asian grandmother was set on fire by two men as she was walking outside her home in Brooklyn, New York.³ Despite this clearly violent act, the New York City Police Department remained hesitant to classify this as a hate crime.³ Interestingly, in the same neighborhood, only a week before this incident, anti-Asian flyers were posted.³ The findings reported by Hohl et al. further confirm these unsettling trends, demonstrating that online anti-Asian sentiments have been rising, with the peak occurring in March 2020. Hohl et al. also report that a significant cluster of anti-Asian hate appeared in the same county in New York, reporting a proportion 3.39 times higher than in other areas in the United States. This not only suggests that this is a region susceptible to Asian hate but also may indicate that there will be continued patterns of these types of hate crimes in the area.

NOVEL VIRUS, ANCIENT RACISM

These findings from Hohl et al. of anti-Asian sentiment are unfortunately not new in the United States. There has been a long history of xenophobia against people from Asia, whereby the Page Act of 1875 was the first restrictive federal immigration law prohibiting entry of Chinese women⁴ and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act banned immigration of Chinese men.⁵ The goal was to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.”⁶ These laws sparked violence against Chinese persons,⁵ including the Rock Springs massacre of 1885, where White miners who were envious of the employment by the Chinese murdered them by shooting, stabbing, or burning them alive in their homes.⁷

These structural forms of racism against Asians have further led to the racialization of disease. For instance, James D. Phelan, the mayor of San Francisco during the plague in 1900, whose slogan was “Keep California White,” and who wrote an article entitled “Why Chinese Should be Excluded,” kept Chinese residents separated from Whites because Phelan believed the Chinese would “breed the germs of a national disease.”^8(p675) Driven by these racist beliefs, Chinatown in San Francisco was quarantined and Chinese residents were not allowed to leave, yet Whites were allowed the privilege of egress and entry⁷—because it was stated that the Chinese were “indifferent to sanitary regulations and breeding disease.”^8(p674) In addition, all East Asians were prohibited from crossing state borders, and alarmingly, without their consent, persons of Asian heritage in Chinatown were inoculated with an experimental vaccine.^7,9,10

ONLINE HATE SPEECH TO REAL-WORLD HATE CRIMES

Remarkably, this transformation of an outbreak into a sociopolitical crisis has reemerged and manifested parallel racialized views expressed by some contemporary political figures. On March 16, 2021, former president Donald Trump used the term “Chinese Virus” in a tweet. The study by Hohl et al. found a clustered surge of anti-Asian hate in March 2020, which is consistent with a previous study by Hswen et al.,¹¹ which found that a massive surge in anti-Asian hate hashtags were used on Twitter following use of this racist rhetoric of the term “Chinese Virus.” These hateful sentiments by persons of influence may be linked to blaming the COVID-19 pandemic on Asians and the rising verbal and physical attacks directed toward Asians. Nguyen et al. showcased how area-level racist sentiment online has been associated with residential racial prejudice,¹² and results from Muller and Schwartz showed the link between racist hashtags and real-world hate crimes.¹³ Yet, despite strong evidence linking the discussion of hate online with real-world impacts, as further exemplified in the research by Hohl et al., this has been met with lackluster countermeasures and response from public health officials and ultimately has done little to spark the civic action needed to tackle and prevent the perpetuation of online hate head on.

It is noteworthy that a causal relationship has not yet been determined through scientific inquiry. Yet, one must ask whether such a relationship is necessary to establish to deem online hate as a hate crime and serious assault on our communities. Consider other domains, where ample evidence has been provided that sentiment on Twitter is predictive of stock market fluctuations.¹⁴ Or consider the real-world consequences of errant tweets from those with influential power such as celebrities—for instance, Kylie Jenner’s singular tweet, comprising a mere 18 words (including terms “sooo” and “urg”) to illustrate her dissatisfaction with Snapchat. The repercussions of this tweet were extensive, equating to roughly $72 million in loss per word that was used, amounting to a total of $1.3 billion in stock loss for Snapchat.¹⁵ In another example, Elon Musk’s 2020 tweet commenting that Tesla’s stock price was too high resulted in significant losses to the carmaker in excess of $14 billion.¹⁶

These examples illustrate the power of words. In the context of online hate and perpetuating racist attitudes, why would we doubt that such online conversations would not have similarly extensive impacts? Repeating the need for additional research at times feels futile, simply because these events pertaining to hate cannot (and should not) be tested empirically. We should acknowledge the serious threats that these types of online communications have and, more importantly, that such conversations reflect deep-seated and racist beliefs that permeate many communities, even those that we believed were free from such prejudice.

Posting hateful content online has become the graffiti of the online world. This can be equated to the horrendous acts of defacing and graffiti that we have witnessed directed toward Black churches, synagogues, and mosques. Yet, no consequences exist in holding those accountable in the online world. Online threats posted on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, to name a few among the many social medial platforms that exist today, can and should be considered criminal charges. These types of attacks on the basis of an individual’s identity—their racial, ethnic, or gender background—may result in serious threats to their well-being, including physical harm or even death. Yet, public health officials, the research community, and the general public continue to ignore or overlook its causality. As a member of the research and public health community, I implore that we take stock of these issues, recognizing the link between the online and offline (real) worlds, and begin to realize the power and impact of online hate.

The average person in the United States spends 7 hours and 50 minutes with digital media each day (https://bit.ly/3C3QAer). There is no doubt that we are living in the online world more than the offline world, considering how the pandemic has ushered our day-to-day interactions to virtual media and has further entrenched our attention on social media feeds and other online media. Researchers have been slow to calculate the effect that the digital online world has had on health and society. As we continue to deepen our reach into the online world, it is critical that we expand on the work presented by Hohl et al. and study its impact on the health and well-being of those who are most vulnerable. It is necessary for public health and government officials to invest in the surveillance of online hate, in a similar manner as has been demonstrated for tracking the COVID-19 pandemic, to detect hate earlier and prevent the spread of hate and resulting real-world violence and harm.