Understanding Asian Americans’ Resilience to COVID-19 Online Hate through Latent Profiles of Ethnic Identity

Abstract

Combining the stress and coping framework with the Communication Theory of Resilience, this study explores how Asian Americans’ ethnic identity is associated with their (a) perceptions of and (b) response to the threat of rising anti-Asian racial hate speech seen on social media during COVID-19. Using a person-centered approach, a latent profile analysis performed on data from a sample of 269 Asian Americans revealed a 4-profile structure. Covariate analyses showed that individuals with a stronger ethnic identity (defined as positive affiliation with their ethnic group and greater exploration) viewed the problem of COVID-19 online hate as more severe and reported greater enactment of resilience communication during the pandemic. These results suggest that there is greater variation in the ways that racially-targeted minorities vicariously experience online racial hate than has been considered previously. Results also indicate that individuals’ ethnic identities relate to how they perceive and respond to others’ online behaviors.