Characterizing Asians in violence: a comparative analysis of English- and Chinese-language media’s crime news coverage during the pandemic

Abstract

This study examined variances in crime news involving Asian perpetrators and Asian victims in a mainstream English-language daily USA Today, and an ethnic newspaper Qiao Bao. Our quantitative content analysis focused on (a) the volume of crime stories published about Asians (as perpetrators and victims respectively), and (b) the news frames used to cover crime incidents involving Asians (as perpetrators and victims respectively). Our results revealed that relative to USA Today, the Chinese-language newspaper Qiao Bao not only reported more violent incidents involving Asians, but also placed less emphasis on thematic frames when covering violent incidents about Asians. On the other hand, the English-language newspaper USA Today published more articles emphasizing the consequences of violence when the crime incidents involved Asians (as either offenders or victims). We theorize that these differences arise due to the nature of ethnic news, as well as structural differences between the two outlets. Situated within the COVID-19 context, this study also found that the volume of crime news about Asian victims significantly grew during the pandemic in Qiao Bao’s coverage but remained unchanged in the USA Today, indicating that Asian victims are more newsworthy to ethnic media and their readers.