Racial framing contests: How anti-Asian racism and its resistance enacted racial projects during COVID-19

This study examines the dynamics of racial framing contexts taking the case 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 15 January 2020 to 26 March 2021), we analyze racial framing contests between movements and counter-movements. Through a mixed-methods approach, we find that: (1) 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 (2) 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, social media, and racial formation.