Leveraging moral foundations for corporate social advocacy combating anti-Asian racism: A computational approach

ABSTRACT CSA on racial justice issues has become more popular in recent years. With the rising number of hate crimes against Asian Americans, including the Atlanta spa shooting incident, companies must consider how to position themselves in racial conversations to fulfill their civic responsibilities and create positive social impacts. This study employed the Moral Foundation Theory (MFT) to assess companies’ CSA communication regarding #StopAsianHate and its role in promoting public engagement on Twitter. The study analyzed 1,253 tweets posted by 469 business accounts engaging in the conversation about Stop Asian Hate on Twitter to identify prevalent CSA themes, various moral values used in CSA messages, and the relationship between the use of various moral values and public engagement (i.e. likes and retweets) on Twitter. This study adds to CSA scholarship by stressing a moral stance and providing suggestions for companies to leverage moral discourse in anti-Asian racism activism on social media.