Praxis, hashtag activism, and social justice: a content analysis of #StopAsianHate narratives

ABSTRACT

The Atlanta Shootings spurred worldwide discussion about anti-Asian hate incidents in the U.S., which eventually evoked the #StopAsianHate movement on Twitter. Based on the theory of praxis, this study extended Walton et al.'s (2019) social justice heuristic of the ‘4Rs,’ which mainly focuses on actions of praxis, to include an additional ‘R’ to represent Reflection. A content analysis study was performed to explore how activists strategically employed the ‘5Rs’ social justice practices within tweets shared during the #StopAsianHate movement. This study further examined the chronological trends of the five social justice practices evident in the hashtag narratives. The results indicate that the public should pay more attention to the actions spurred by the hashtag movement while also reflecting on how its effects can be optimized to promote social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Hashtag activism
• social justice
• Praxis
• Asian American
• content analysis
• hashtag narrative

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Jin-Ae Kang, Dr. YoungJu Shin, Dr. Do Kyun Kim, and Dr. Peter J. Schulz for editing this special issue. We also thank anonymous reviewers for providing insightful critiques to help us revise our manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chenxing Xie

Chenxing Xie is a Ph.D. candidate in the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program at North Carolina State University. Her research interests include technical and professional communication, intercultural communication, rhetoric of health and medicine, and social justice. Her work has been published in the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization and Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication.

Peiyao Liu

Peiyao Liu is a master’s student in Communication at North Carolina State University. Her research interests focus on social media, crisis communication, and computer-mediated communication.

Yang Cheng

Yang Cheng is an associate professor in the department of communication at North Carolina State University. She has demonstrated a long-term commitment to research involving global public relations management, social media and artificial intelligence, and crisis communication. She has published more than 71 journal articles and book chapters. Some of her publications have appeared in top journals such as the New Media & Society, American Behavioral Scientist, and Journal of Public Relations Research.