Working Paper: NBER ID: w30588
Authors: Andy Cao; Jason M. Lindo; Jiee Zhong
Abstract: We investigate whether Donald Trump's "Chinese Virus" tweets contributed to the rise of anti-Asian incidents. We find that the number of incidents spiked following Trump’s initial “Chinese Virus” tweets and the subsequent dramatic rise in internet search activity for the phrase. Difference-in-differences and event-study analyses leveraging spatial variation indicate that this spike in anti-Asian incidents was significantly more pronounced in counties that supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election relative to those that supported Hillary Clinton. We estimate that anti-Asian incidents spiked by 4000 percent in Trump-supporting counties, over and above the spike observed in Clinton-supporting counties.
Keywords: Social Media; Hate Incidents; Trump Tweets; Anti-Asian Hate; COVID-19
JEL Codes: H0; I18; J15; K0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Google search queries for 'Chinese virus' (K24) | anti-Asian hate incidents (J15) |
| Trump's tweets (Y60) | anti-Asian hate incidents (J15) |
| Trump's tweets (Y60) | Google search queries for 'Chinese virus' (K24) |