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The integrated threat theory (ITT) was used to formulate questions surrounding incivility and moral foundations within Twitter discourses related to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>The authors collected tweets and retweets posted by English-speaking Twitter users in the United States (US) across the following three phases: (1) initial discovery of COVID-19 in China, (2) high US mortality rate from COVID-19 and (3) the announcement that a vaccine would soon be available in the US.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>The authors found a significant difference in uncivil tweets posted in cities with higher levels of reported hate crimes against Asians than cities with low levels. Lastly, English-speaking Twitter users tended to employ moral virtue words and moral vice words when discussing China and Chinese culture\/populations.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Research limitations\/implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>The bags-of-words employed are limited in capturing nuanced and metaphorical terms. In addition, the analysis focused solely on Tweets composed in English and thus did not capture the thoughts and opinions of non-English speakers. Lastly, this study did not address all Asian countries. In this sense, the findings of this study might not be applicable to Tweets about other nations.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Practical implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>Given that many Twitter users tend to use terms of moral virtue in support of Asians and Asian communities, the authors suggest that non-governmental organization administrators provide morally supportive social media campaigns that encourage users to engage in civil discourse.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Social implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>These findings have theoretical implications as the frameworks of integrated threats and moral foundations were used to offer group-level explanations for online behavior. Additional research is needed to explore whether these frameworks can be used to explain negativity in other communication environments.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>This study expands the findings of prior studies that identified the extent to which Twitter users express hate speech, focusing on general Twitter discourse across three specific periods of the pandemic: degrees of incivility and moral foundations, and comparison of incivility based on the prevalence of reported hate crimes.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/intr-11-2020-0678","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,24]],"date-time":"2021-08-24T23:09:46Z","timestamp":1629846586000},"page":"362-378","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":15,"title":["Exploring incivility and moral foundations toward Asians in English-speaking tweets in hate crime-reporting cities during the COVID-19 pandemic"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"32","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/2.zoppoz.workers.dev:443\/https\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6554-5720","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Bumsoo","family":"Kim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/2.zoppoz.workers.dev:443\/https\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2310-1237","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Eric","family":"Cooks","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Seong-Kyu","family":"Kim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"140","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,8,26]]},"reference":[{"issue":"5","key":"key2022011705590253500_ref001","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"598","DOI":"10.1177\/1075547017735113","article-title":"Social media, science, and attack discourse: how Twitter discussions of climate change use sarcasm and incivility","volume":"39","year":"2017","journal-title":"Science Communication"},{"key":"key2022011705590253500_ref002","article-title":"ADL hate crime map","author":"Anti-Defamation League","year":"2021","journal-title":"ADL"},{"key":"key2022011705590253500_ref003","article-title":"\u2018Coughing while Asian\u2019: living in fear as racism feeds off coronavirus panic","year":"2020","journal-title":"The Guardian"},{"key":"key2022011705590253500_ref004","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"492","DOI":"10.1109\/WI-IAT.2010.63","article-title":"Predicting the future with social media","year":"2010"},{"key":"key2022011705590253500_ref005","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"759","DOI":"10.1145\/3041021.3054223","article-title":"Deep learning for hate speech detection in tweets","year":"2017"},{"key":"key2022011705590253500_ref006","unstructured":"Bandura, A. 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