Coca-Cola did not cut ties with Taylor Swift after Kamala Harris endorsement

^{By David Campbell}

Social media posts claiming that Coca-Cola has ended a commercial relationship with US singer Taylor Swift over her political views are based on satirical news articles.

Despite the original articles being labelled as satire, claims have spread across Facebook, Threads and X without this context, with comments by some users indicating they believe the claim to be true.

“Coca-Cola Ends Long-Term Partnership with Taylor Swift: ‘We Don’t Support Her Endorsement’”, reads one such post which features adjacent photos of Swift and the Coca-Cola logo. The post was shared to the 670,000 users of a Facebook group dedicated to discussing tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Musk, known for his involvement with companies such as SpaceX, Tesla and the social media platform X, has publicly endorsed Donald Trump in the US presidential race.

Swift has faced a wave of claims since announcing her support for rival candidate Vice President Kamala Harris in September — a decision she said she chose to make public after seeing AI-generated images that falsely suggested she was supporting Trump.

The chart-topping singer entered into a partnership with Coca-Cola in 2013 and has appeared in several ads promoting Diet Coke. The company has made no announcement about dumping Swift, with the most recent reference to her on its website dating from 2014.

Data from Facebook indicates the first claim about a breakup with Swift, which was labelled as satire, appeared on the platform on September 14, 2024. (It appeared on X the next day.)

The Facebook post, published by an account called “SpaceX Fanclub”, was followed up a few hours later with a comment directing users to read the full article at Esspots.com. 

The article was also clearly labelled as satire, with the website describing itself as “a subsidiary of SpaceXMania.com specialising in satire and parody news”.

It includes confected quotes attributed to a Coca-Cola spokesperson, such as: “Taylor’s decision to endorse a political candidate doesn’t align with Coca-Cola’s commitment to staying out of the political arena. We just sell soda.”

On the same day, another version of the story was published by the Esspots-affiliated website SpaceXMania, also a satirical site, whose stated mission includes combining “the freshest fake news, some sassy analysis, and a good dose of satire”.

Social media users then started spreading the claim without labelling it as satire. Content posted without proper context is a form of misinformation.

Facebook accounts spreading the Swift claim in Australia appear to be bots, having posted identical claims at the same time. The recent histories of these accounts, each with between 5,000 and 10,000 followers, show the same pattern of behaviour.

RMIT Lookout contacted Coca-Cola for comment but did not receive a response. 

AFP reported that a Coca-Cola spokesperson had confirmed in an email to them that the claim was false. Other fact checkers have also found the claim to be false, among them Snopes, USA Today and PolitiFact.

_{Thumbnail credit: Eva Rinaldia (Creative Commons, some rights reserved)}