This study investigates Sinophobia within Chinese-language Twitter communities during the early COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing a database of over 25 million Chinese tweets, the researchers analyzed sentiments, content, and topics using ROBERTa and structural topic modeling. Results indicate that 62.2% of tweets expressed negative sentiment toward China, primarily targeting the government and CCP rather than the Chinese people. The most prevalent topics included politics (Hong Kong protests, Taiwan issues), COVID-19, and US-China relations. Pro-China and anti-China users exhibited limited cross-engagement, revealing significant segregation within the online discourse.

Yongjun Zhang, Hao Lin, Yi Wang, Xinguang Fan