Social Disaster and Racial Framing Contests: How Anti-Asian Racism and its Resistance Enacted Racial Projects During COVID-19

This study examines the dynamics of social disasters in the context of anti-Asian hate speech and counter-hate speech on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the COVID-HATE dataset (n = 2,491,405 tweets posted January 15, 2020 to March 26, 2021) , we analyze racial framing contests between movements and counter-movements. Through a mixed-methods approach, we find that: (1) the WHO's pandemic declaration triggered a significant increase in anti-Asian hate tweets, with counter-hate tweets emerging in response; (2) hate frames deployed racial projects characterizing Asians as public health and national security threats, while counter-frames either directly challenged these characterizations or bypassed them to focus on systemic racism; and (3) hate and counter-hate movements often "spoke past" each other rather than engaging in direct frame-counterframe dynamics as prevailing theories would predict. Counter-movements did not consistently produce opposing frames for each hate frame but rather developed independent messaging focused on combating racism itself. This study advances our understanding of how both hate and resistance operate through racial projects, with implications for theories of social movements, political communication, and racial formation.