Trump Impeachment Talk Lights Up Social Media
United States President Donald Trump has arguably led the world conversation for three years now. But this week, that spotlight has shone brighter.
This week, democratic leaders have pushed for Trump’s impeachment, following news last week of a conversation that Trump had with Ukraine president Volodyymr Zolensky in July. According to CNN, the talk between the two world leaders centered around Trump’s insistence that Ukraine investigate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, for their involvement with a Ukranian company.
Opposition leaders have accused Trump of misusing his position to target a political rival. And on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into the president.
On Wednesday, the White House released the transcripts of the aforementioned conversation, which drew even more criticism on Twitter.
Trump and his supporters have shot back, with many explanations for the provided transcripts, including a misuse of context.
The topic overall has set social media ablaze. A search on Social Studio of the term “impeachment” netted 4.4 million hits on social media over the past seven days. Yesterday alone, there were slightly more than two million hits.
The drivers of the conversation are somewhat expected. With high scores of 98 on a 100-point scale, ABC, Al Jazeera, BBC, and CNN have led the way. But some surprising influencers with the same score of 98 are The Onion and Rolling Stone. Influencers have also come from other countries, such as Zeit Online (Germany), Le Monde (France), La Jornada (Mexico), and The Times of India.
Social Media has also provided a word cloud of mentions in the conversation about impeachment.
Overall, the conversation towards the topic has been quite negative. Of course, there has also been tweets framed in such ways as sarcastic, which have not been accounted for.
Supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh has also been mentioned with impeachment. Further search with Social Studio could eliminate those tweets that were directed to Kavanaugh. Though with the firestorm over the past two days, it’s likely that the overwhelming majority of the posts directed towards impeachment are also directed towards Trump.
We’ll continue to monitor the social media conversation from our home in east Tennesse.