09.09.2026journal-article
Asian Journal of Social Psychology
What drives hateful tweets to go viral? Threat perception and Twitter engagement: The case of the COVID ‐19 pandemic
Abstract Drawing on Intergroup Threat Theory as an analytical framework, this study analyses pandemic‐driven Sinophobic tweets to examine how threat‐laden language influences user engagement through computational text analysis. Findings showed that those conveying ideological threats generated higher engagement, whereas those involving mixed threat perceptions or moral concerns led to increased engagement only when accompanied by greater use of negative emotional language. This study extends intergroup threat theor …