College Capstone at Champlain College.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. saw a drastic increase in discrimination against Asian Americans in the form of conspiracy, online racism, microaggressions, and physical assault. To be clear, AAPI discrimination has existed in this country for a very long time, but as a result of the pandemic, the number of racist incidents more than tripled just from 2020 to 2021. Shocking as that may be, a reason for this is the way news media reported on COVID-19 updates, such as how the virus originated from China, and how social media reacted to the news. Media as a whole tends to amplify social behaviors, both online and with in-person interactions. The goal of this project was to analyze how exactly news media amplified fear of the COVID-19 pandemic and how that impacted the lives of Asian Americans.
