"You know what that tastes like? Like a company that doesn't support genocide:" Thematic analysis of TikTok users' boycott of Starbucks Coffee during the Israel-Hamas conflict

As the Israel-Hamas conflict raged in the Gaza Strip, the world saw numbers of individuals and corporations offer competing support to the two sides. As the conflict spanned over a year, more individuals took to social media to spread messages decrying the war and the companies that were identified as purportedly supporting Israel. In this study, we conducted a thematic analysis of boycott messages targeting Starbucks on TikTok, examining how protesters crafted content to persuade viewers to join the campaign against the coffee giant. The results of our analysis indicated a creation of messages rooted in rhetoric that placed the content creators and those who support them in a position of moral superiority to anyone who did not agree with their message or did not comply with the implied demand to stop patronizing Starbucks. This echoes the work of Dalakas et al. (2022) in the categorization of boycott messages and the work of Zulli and Zulli (2022) in finding reinforcement with mimetic replication of content and the establishment of “imitation publics.” This work also explored the implications of social media boycotting messages and the power of viral content to influence behavior and financially affect businesses.