Proposal: Nobody Could Rationalize Anti-Asian Racism into Coronavirus Anxiety

Topic & Angle

The core of this news commentary is about racism. The issue of racism exists worldwide for a long history, and numerous people have struggled to eliminate the stereotype based on races. However, the Coronavirus is providing an “excuse” for racist behaviors globally.

As Ipsos MORI reveals that 28% Australians consider a very high level of the Coronavirus threat to the world, the xenophobia and racism towards the Asians living in Australia are significantly increasing in recent months, and many Asians have experienced the passive impacts explicitly or implicitly.

In the news commentary, the factors like “Coronavirus Anxiety” and “Sinophobia” would be introduced, and the influences of this anti-Asian wave in Australia would be illustrated with several examples from news and interview. Additionally, I would further discuss how to define and consider the discrimination among different Asian groups or individuals. Lastly, the core stance would be emphasized as that the anxiety about Coronavirus can never rationalize racism in any place or circumstance.

Desired Publication & Audience

This commentary piece is assumed for the ABC News, a leading mainstream news agency based on Australia, reaching more than 42% of the population in Australia. As the topic of the narrative becomes a current social issue in Australia, and involves a variety of resident identities, races and generations, the ABC News are able to play a significant role to inform the problem and address the message of anti-racism to the Australian society.

Besides, by pursing “diversity initiatives”, the ABC News has attracted audiences ranged from local Australians to the Asian communities in Australia, which means the narrative could reach both the non-Asian and Asian in Australia as two groups of the targeted audience.

Sources of Information

The sources of this commentary article consist of three categories. The first one is the visual and textual reports or online contents about racism on Asians in Australia, to draw out the serious social problem. Secondly, the experience of my interviewee Mera Miao being discriminated by another Asian in Sydney would be included, to discuss that “Corona-racism” also exists within the Asian groups. Thirdly, the statements and measures against anti-Asian behaviors would be cited countering to racism.

List of sources:

• Interview with Mera Miao
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Coronavirus Survey Report from Ipsos MORI
• Racist headlines from The Herald Sun and The Daily Telegraph
• Petition against the “Corona-racist” media on Change.org
• Recent anti-Asian crime news from The Guardian, Nine News and ABC News
• Diversity Arts Australia
• Asian Australian Alliance
• Australian Human Rights Commission

Multimedia, Hypertext, Interactivity and SEO

To improve the quality, the online narrative would include the following multimedia and hypertext contents:

• Hyperlinks to the related sources
• Images of Australian newspaper using racist headlines
• Screenshot and hypertext of related Twitter contents
• Video of Scott Morrison condemning the racism in Australia (as below)

Also, the narrative would provide a hyperlink of the online survey about anti-Asian experience and be open for sharing to raise the interactivity. And the employment of headlines and tags embedding the keywords like Asian, Australia, Coronavirus and racism makes the coverage more SEO-friendly.