Howard Schultz might run for president
Posted by Ying Xiong
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in an interview with 60 Minutes on January 27, 2019, that he is “seriously thinking of running for president.” Trump responded to his potential competitor and tweeted on January 28, 2019, that Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run and making bizarre claims that he hopes the Starbucks in his New York City Trump Tower is still paying rent.
From January 27 to January 29, 2019, 61,000 posts online mentioned Howard Schultz and Starbucks. 98.5% of posts were from Twitter. On January 28, 2019, the post volume on Twitter reached to peak.
In the on-topic word cloud, “tower” and “guts,” words from Trump’s tweet were frequently mentioned in the social media conversation. The other social media conversation trend was boycotting. Hashtags, #BoycottStarbucks, #DemsBoycottStarbucks, and #NoHowardNo, were used frequently. Negative sentiment was expressed by using the boycott-relevant hashtags.
For the on-topic social influencers, the top influencers were news agencies’ official accounts (e.g., @ABC News, @CNN, @CNN Breaking News, @MarketWatch). As for individuals, President Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro (host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” podcast), Seth Abramson (an attorney and professor at the University of New Hampshire) had the influencer score of 95/100.
