Blaming minorities during public health crises: post-COVID-19 substantive and methodological reflections from the UK

McLaren, Lauren and Tsatsou, Panayiota and Zhu, Yimei (2024) Blaming minorities during public health crises: post-COVID-19 substantive and methodological reflections from the UK. Ethnic and Racial Studies. pp. 1-23. ISSN 0141-9870

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Abstract

Using an original survey fielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper contributes to understanding the phenomenon of blaming minorities during health crises and public perceptions of minorities more generally. We pose direct and indirect (split-sample) survey questions that gauge explicit blame of minorities, and potential implicit blame of particular groups and intergroup bias. Findings reveal that significant numbers tend to explicitly blame minorities for the spread of COVID-19; when asked about behaviors of the UK’s two largest religious minority groups – Muslims and Hindus – clear majorities blame these groups, with smaller percentages appearing to blame the country’s dominant ingroup. We test hypotheses drawn from theories of perceived threat, locus of control and authoritarianism: blaming minorities is expected to be associated with COVID-19-related (disease) threat, generally low sense of personal control, concern about the country’s lack of control over COVID-19, and general need for social conformity.

Item Type: Article
Identification Number: 10.1080/01419870.2024.2342408
Dates:
Date
Event
27 March 2024
Accepted
19 April 2024
Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords: COVID-19, blame, prejudice, minorities;, opinion, threat
Subjects: CAH24 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01 - media, journalism and communications > CAH24-01-05 - media studies
Divisions: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > College of English and Media
Depositing User: Gemma Tonks
Date Deposited: 22 May 2024 14:20
Last Modified: 22 May 2024 14:20
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15506

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