Asian Australian COVID-19 Surveys

This project is composed of a series of online surveys and interviews targeting Asian-heritage populations in Australia to understand the challenges and strategies going through COVID-19.

The project is composed of a series of online surveys and interviews targeting Asian-heritage populations in Australia to understand the challenges and strategies going through COVID-19. Launched in October 2020, the first national survey was conducted in English and gathered 432 responses from self-identified Asian Australians. The team found that Asian Australians mostly relied on traditional media and placed high trust in government and their handing of the global health crisis. This was followed by the second national survey focusing on young Asian Australians, aged between 16 and 30 (N = 411), on how they consumed COVID-19 related information on the social media and how racism-related contents had impact on their emotions and life satisfaction. The third survey was a continuation from the first project, translated into six Asian languages (Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Korean), in order to understand diverse linguistic communities’ responses to COVID-19 communications.

These large scale online surveys are complemented with in-depth interviews of targeted groups of Asian Australians such as women and international students. Sub-groups of researchers carry out individual interviews with participants to contextualise the stories and narratives from Asian Australians themselves. Themes emerged out of the interviews include intimate citizenship, the intersectionality of gender, race and class, pandemic mobilities and the impact on Australian higher education.

Asian Australian COVID-19 Surveys are funded externally by the Australia Korea Foundation under the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and internally by the Chancellery Office of the University of Melbourne. A multidisciplinary team of researchers in media, communication, migration as well as Asian Studies investigate the lived experiences and coping strategies of Asian Australians, undergoing a global pandemic while navigating government policies and media engagement. The project welcomes collaboration with ethnic resident associations, language schools, international student associations, ethnic language media groups and the like.

Project Partners

Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

SBS

Researchers

Jay Song

Wonsun Shin

Wilfred Wang

Surjeet Dhanji

Jun Ohashi

Silvia Ang

Qiuping Pan

Lulu Spencer

Trang Le

Hirzi Putra Laksana