“Go eat a bat, Chang!”: On the Emergence of Sinophobic Behavior on Web Communities in the Face of COVID-19* Fatemeh Tahmasbi1, Leonard Schild2, Chen Ling3, Jeremy Blackburn1, Gianluca Stringhini3, Yang Zhang2, and Savvas Zannettou4 1Binghamton University,2CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, 3Boston University, 4Max Planck Institute for Informatics
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[email protected] Abstract thought to have originated in China, with the presumed ground zero centered around a wet market in the city of Wuhan in The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives the Hubei province [50]. In a few months, SARS-CoV-2 has in an unprecedented way. In the face of the projected catas- spread, allegedly from a bat or pangolin, to essentially every trophic consequences, many countries enforced social distanc- country in the world, resulting in over 1M cases of COVID-19 ing measures in an attempt to limit the spread of the virus. and 50K deaths as of April 2, 2020 [45]. Under these conditions, the Web has become an indispensable Humankind has taken unprecedented steps to mitigating the medium for information acquisition, communication, and en- spread of SARS-CoV-2, enacting social distancing measures tertainment. At the same time, unfortunately, the Web is ex- that go against our very nature. While the repercussions of so- ploited for the dissemination of potentially harmful and disturb- cial distancing measures are yet to be fully understood, one ing content, such as the spread of conspiracy theories and hate- thing is certain: the Web has not only proven essential to the ful speech towards specific ethnic groups, in particular towards approximately normal continuation of daily life, but also as a Chinese people since COVID-19 is believed to have originated tool by which to ease the pain of isolation.