Moral framing and issue-based framing of #StopAsianHate campaigns on Twitter

Abstract

Guided by moral foundation theory (MFT), this study examines #StopAsianHate messages on Twitter to identify the main narratives surrounding the campaign. It also aims to unpack how moral framing and strategic narratives are related to online engagement size in social justice campaigns. Mixed methods were used to analyze the sampled tweets, including computational approaches based on the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary, structural topic modeling, and hurdle negative binomial regression. The findings show that moral framing is related to a message’s likelihood of receiving likes or retweets on Twitter. Overall, moral framing using virtue values is positively related to the chance of a tweet being retweeted or liked, while vice framing has mixed effects on user engagement. Issue-based framing by zooming in on specific topics helps to avoid zero likes or retweets but does not encourage engagement. We also discuss the implications of these results on how to leverage moral framing and strategic narratives to raise awareness of social injustice.