Welcome to this week’s edition of The Labs Report, your one-stop, data-driven shop to quickly get up to speed on the week’s most important and influential articles, stories and authors.

Here’s what was trending from May 9th to May 15th, 2019.

The Five Most-Talked-About News Stories of the Week

  1. White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War | The New York Times
  2. Abortions after six weeks will now be illegal in Georgia | CBS News
  3. A pregnant 11-year-old rape victim in Ohio would no longer be allowed to have an abortion under new state law | CBS News
  4. Barr Assigns U.S. Attorney in Connecticut to Review Origins of Russia Inquiry | The New York Times
  5. Lawmakers Vote to Effectively Ban Abortion in Alabama | The New York Times

Last week, the most-talked-about news stories of the week centered around the Mueller report and other ongoing issues tied to the presidency. This week, online discussions narrowed in on a different facet of politics.

While the first murmurings of proposed military deployments to the Middle East received the highest number of mentions on Twitter,  reporting on the increasing number of restrictive abortion bills being passed around the country dominated the news cycle this week. Notably, last week’s story from CBS News around Georgia’s new abortion bill retained its number two spot.

The 10 Most Influential Authors of the Week

  1. CNN
  2. The New York Times
  3. too lit brit (@brinnnyvibes)
  4. The Washington Post
  5. Bloomberg
  6. Jonathan Rogers (@SKEJayRogers)
  7. MSNBC
  8. Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1)
  9. NBC News
  10. Reuters Top News

This week’s most influential authors included many of the usual suspects – CNN retained the number one spot for two weeks running, The New York Times saw a nice bump following its spate of popular stories this week and The Washington Post, Bloomberg, MSNBC, NBC News and Reuters all saw high engagement (online interactions, e.g. likes, comments, Retweets, etc.) around their stories.

Two Twitter users whose Tweets made into the top five of the week (see below) also took home two of the top spots.

The Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week

Discussions around the latest string of restrictive abortion bills – and the consequences of those bills – again drove the most shared Tweets of the week. Reactions to recent incidents of gun violence in schools also drew significant attention this week, rounding out the top five.

1. Comparative commentary on Georgia’s latest abortion bill

2. Additional commentary around Georgia’s abortion bill

3. Reacting to news of a foiled school shooting plot in Georgia

*Potentially offensive language is blurred in the above image.

4. Remembering Kendrick Castillo, the victim of last week’s school shooting in Colorado

*Potentially offensive language is blurred in the above image.

5. Discussing the consequences of Ohio’s new abortion restrictions

Want more data-driven insights while you wait for next week’s edition of The Labs Report? Check out our Resource Center or get in touch with our team.

Methodology: The data which drives this series, provided by the Zignal Labs platform, is informed by a 10% sampling of Twitter activity around news stories published from May 9, 2019 to May 15, 2019. Stories are published by 25 of the most highly-read publications across the country (based on circulation data), including: ABC News, Bloomberg, The Boston Globe, CBS News, The Chicago Tribune, CNN, The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post, Fox News, The Houston Chronicle, Huffington Post, The LA Times, MSNBC, NBC News, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, The New York Times, Newsday, Reuters Top News, The Seattle Times, The Star Tribune, The Tampa Bay News, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
The “Top 5 Most-Talked-About Stories of the Week” are the five stories from the above-mentioned publications that received the most mentions across Twitter from May 9, 2019 to May 15, 2019, ranked by number of mentions from that date range.
The “Top 10 Most Influential Authors of the Week “ are the ten authors who saw the most engagement on Twitter around Tweets related to news stories published by the above-mentioned publications from May 9, 2019 to May 15, 2019, ranked by number of engagements from that date range.
The “Top Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week” are the five Tweets, related to news stories published by the above-mentioned publications from May 9, 2019 to May 15, 2019, that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.