{"id":387,"date":"2021-04-14T13:23:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T13:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/?p=387"},"modified":"2021-10-18T13:03:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T13:03:42","slug":"refugees-to-the-rescue-motivating-pro-refugee-public-engagement-during-the-covid-19-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/2021\/04\/14\/refugees-to-the-rescue-motivating-pro-refugee-public-engagement-during-the-covid-19-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Refugees to the Rescue: Motivating Pro-Refugee Public Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Claire Leslie Adida, Adeline Lo, Lauren Prather, <\/em>and Scott Williamson<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Refugees are often scapegoated during public health crises. How can refugee advocacy organizations push back effectively? During the COVID-19 pandemic, these organizations have advanced narratives that emphasize refugees\u2019 contribution to fighting the virus. They highlight stories of doctors who first came to the United States as refugees and are now caring for those hospitalized by COVID-19; they also highlight stories of everyday neighborhood heroes such as refugees who deliver groceries to their vulnerable neighbors. Can these solidarity narratives against a common enemy, the coronavirus, mobilize public engagement with the refugee cause?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Summer of 2020, we partnered with the country\u2019s leading refugee advocate organizations, Refugee Council USA and Refugees International, to test the effects of these refugee solidarity narratives on the American public\u2019s engagement with their mission. Relying on Facebook\u2019s advertising experiment tool, which allows organizations to test different versions of an ad on Facebook audiences, we randomly assigned Facebook users to real ads featuring different versions of refugee narratives and asking participants to click to show support for refugees. We interpret a click on our ads as engagement with the refugee advocacy organization. We also analyze whether respondents engaged with the ads by \u201cliking\u201d them or reacting in similarly positive ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tested the two types of narratives described above: variants on a narrative about refugee doctors fighting COVID, and variants on a narrative about a refugee neighbor delivering groceries. In the doctor narrative, we tested whether mentioning COVID, and whether the refugee or the immigrant label, made any difference in engagement. In the everyday neighbor narrative, we varied the location mentioned in our ads to reflect a more or less local connection to the Facebook users. Specifically, since the refugee in question lives in Lancaster, PA, we varied whether or not our ad mentioned Lancaster, Pennsylvania, or the USA, and we broadcasted the ad to Lancaster-based Facebook users only. Finally, in this narrative, we also tested whether mentioning COVID changed engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our findings suggest that mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic explicitly makes no difference in engagement with the ads. It is possible that this null effect can be explained by the salience of the pandemic in Americans\u2019 lives. The results suggest that advocacy materials highlighting refugee efforts to help other Americans are unlikely to be more or less effective at driving engagement if they mention COVID-19 specifically. Importantly, the results reveal that mentioning COVID-19 does not decrease engagement, which we might have expected given the potential for a negative association between foreigner residents and the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also found that labeling the individual in our ads as a \u201crefugee doctor\u201d versus \u201cimmigrant doctor\u201d did not affect click rates on the ads, though both of these labels increased click rates relative to ads in which the individual was labeled only as a \u201cdoctor\u201d. This pattern suggests that in the context of the pandemic, emphasizing the refugee or immigrant origins of those who fight against the virus can generate engagement with refugee advocate organizations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we find weak evidence that Facebook users from Lancaster engaged with the ads more when they referenced refugees volunteering in their own community. Users were slightly more likely to click on the ads that showed the refugee helping in Lancaster. They were also more likely to record a positive reaction to these ads with the like button. These findings imply that speaking to a more local audience by showing the efforts of refugees in their communities can generate more engagement with advocates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our study helps inform the outreach efforts of refugee advocates, who fight scapegoating narratives with stories of refugee heroes. Under certain conditions, the helping narratives we studied increased engagement for these organizations and mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic did not depress engagement. Overall, when refugees and immigrants are described as supporting their community during a crisis, our study participants appear to want to offer support in return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go to full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Claire Leslie Adida, Adeline Lo, Lauren Prather, and Scott Williamson Refugees are often scapegoated during public health crises. How can refugee advocacy organizations push back effectively? During the COVID-19 pandemic, these organizations have advanced narratives that emphasize refugees\u2019 contribution to fighting the virus. They highlight stories of doctors who first came to the United States … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25307,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jeps-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}