Yonder has been monitoring faction activity and conversations around the 2022 Olympics, including possible brand boycotts. See highlights below.
If your brand is being included in this narrative, we encourage you to click below to spend 30 minutes with our team to unpack what’s unfolding and understand how the conversation could impact your brand and stakeholders.
A narrative has emerged regarding a planned event on June 23, the International Olympic Day, to call for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics and the brands sponsoring it. Brands like Coca Cola, Airbnb, and Visa are being called out. The narrative is spreading in an inauthentic manner with 51% of the posts coming from spam accounts. Inauthentic activity is helping amplify the narrative, which is gaining in volume and speed online.
Narrative volume recently spiked as factions amplified calls for the Beijing Winter Olympics Sponsor Accountability Act to ban the federal government from contracting with any business that sponsors the 2022 Beijing Olympics for four years. This narrative has become intertwined with conversations about a Senate spending bill, as well as other countries (e.g. Czech Republic) launching their own boycott campaigns.
Two weeks ago, the most influential factions behind this narrative included Hong Kong Anti-China Protesters and Chinese State Media; however, Fringe Trolls have gained the most influence over the conversation in recent days. This fringe faction is engaging with range of narratives -- from how events like the Olympics promote consumer culture to conspiracy theories originated by Senator Tom Cotton who believes China wants to collect the DNA of elite athletes to develop "biologically-enhanced super soldiers."
Overall, this conversation is inauthentic. 16% of the posts in this conversation are from inauthentic accounts (baseline is less than 10%). Moreover, 2% of posts are from automated accounts (baseline is less than 1%) and posts from spam accounts make up 12% of this conversation (baseline is less than 8%).
