Pew Study: Some Asian Americans get more attention from Congress than others

Congress is more aware of the Asian American communities than past years, but if the lawmakers' social media accounts are reflections of that newfound recognition, some groups are getting more attention than others.

Halfway through Asian American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month, a new Pew Research Center analysis of more than five years of congressional social media activity finds that members of Congress are increasingly mentioning Asian Americans on Facebook and Twitter. 

The findings come as 32% of Asian adults in the U.S say they have feared that someone might threaten or physically attack them due to their race in the wake of violent incidents against Asian Americans during the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

Asian Americans are also the fastest growing demographic that futurists predict will  increase that group's political and cultural influence. 

Certain origin groups – most notably Korean and Japanese Americans – are mentioned disproportionately by lawmakers on social media relative to their share of the Asian American population. 

From Jan. 1, 2016, to April 5, 2021, Japanese Americans were mentioned in 20% of posts that referenced Asian American origin groups, more than three times their share of the Asian American population (6%). 

In that same time period, references to Korean Americans accounted for 23% of lawmaker mentions of Asian American origin groups, despite this group making up just 8% of the Asian American population. 

More recently, mentions of Chinese Americans have made up nearly one-third (34%) of lawmaker origin group references since the beginning of 2020.

However, in the attention given to these groups, other groups are being left by the wayside. Together, Korean, Japanese and Chinese subgroups make up only 36% of the Asian American population. 

Although the Indian, Filipino and Vietnamese subgroups are 47% of the Asian American population, they have actually seen their Congressional social media mentions drop this past year.

Indian Americans make up 20% of the Asian American population, the second largest group after the Chinese (22%). In the five years leading up to 2021, were mentioned in only 16% of the postings. This past year, despite having Indian American Kamala Harris as Vice President, mentions dropped even further to 10%.

Filipinos, which make up the third largest Asian American group at 18%, who were mentioned in social media  postings 10% between 2016 to 2020, saw their mentions drop to 7% in the past year.

For the Vietnamese community, which is 9% of the Asian American population, the five year social media mentions were 6%, dropping to 4% last year.

This analysis of every Facebook post and tweet created by every voting member of Congress between Jan. 1, 2016, and April 5, 2021, finds that members of Congress collectively mentioned Asian Americans fewer than 2,000 times yearly from 2016 through 2019. But the volume of these posts increased dramatically in 2020. And in the month of March 2021 alone (before the fatal shooting of six Asian women and two other people in the Atlanta area on March 16 and several other prominent incidents of anti-Asian violence), lawmakers posted over 2,500 references to Asian Americans, a figure that is larger than the yearly totals for any year prior to 2020.

Since early 2020, one area of topical focus has stood out over all others in lawmaker posts mentioning Asian Americans: 

Of the more than 7,000 posts that mentioned Asian Americans from Jan. 1, 2020, through April 5, 2021, 64% mentioned or expressed concern about racism, discrimination, xenophobia or violence toward Asian Americans. 

Of the posts that expressed concern, many were spurred by the Atlanta spa shootings and other acts of violence against Asian Americans in March 2021, while 33% of all posts mentioning concern about Asian Americans since the beginning of 2020 explicitly mentioned terms such as “COVID,” “pandemic” or “coronavirus.”

Other key findings from the report include:

• Democratic lawmakers have produced the majority of posts mentioning Asian Americans. Since January 2020, Democratic lawmakers have produced 6,872 of the 7,263 such posts from members of Congress. By comparison, Republican lawmakers have produced just 391. Democratic lawmakers have also produced the vast majority (97%) of posts expressing concern about violence, racism or discrimination towards Asian Americans over the same time period.

• Since early 2020, #StopAsianHate has been the most common hashtag used in lawmaker posts about Asian Americans. Some 35% of active lawmakers used this hashtag from Jan. 1, 2020, through April 5, 2021, while 14% used the similar #StopAAPIHate hashtag. The use of each hashtag increased dramatically in the wake of the fatal shooting of six Asian women and two other people in the Atlanta area on March 16, 2021. The vast majority of posts mentioning these two hashtags (99%) were produced by Democratic lawmakers.

• Members of Congress who are themselves Asian American or Pacific Islander American also produce an outsize share of posts about Asian Americans. This group has comprised just 4% of active lawmakers and have produced 6% of all congressional posts on Facebook and Twitter – on any topic – dating back to January 2020. But these members produced roughly one-third (36%) of all social media posts mentioning Asian Americans during that time period.

• Republican lawmakers' social media posts were more prone to mention the Asian countries of origin more frequently than Asian Americans. For example, since January 2020 Democratic members of Congress have created a similar number of posts on Facebook and Twitter mentioning Asian Americans (6,874) and mentioning Asian countries or origin groups (7,695). But in the same time period, Republican lawmakers have shared 58 times as many posts mentioning Asian countries and people (22,493) as have mentioned Asian Americans (391).