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

Here’s what was trending on Twitter from July 18th to July 24th, 2019.

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

  1. Killer released from prison, dubbed too old to be dangerous, kills again | The New York Post
  2. A Dallas-born citizen picked up by the Border Patrol has been detained for three weeks, his lawyer says | The Dallas Morning News
  3. An apocalyptic mass extinction will begin in 2100, scientists say | The New York Post
  4. Labor fight roils Bernie Sanders campaign as workers demand the $15 hourly pay the candidate has proposed for employees nationwide  | The Washington Post
  5. Louisiana Police Officer on Facebook Says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‘Needs a Round’ | The New York Times

The New York Post scored two of the most-talked-about stories of the week, with a pair of sensationalist splashes around a gruesome murder and a scientific study that predicts a mass extinction will begin by 2100.

Elsewhere, a Dallas Morning News story about a US citizen detained by the Border Patrol (who has now been released) gained a lot of traction, while an ironic story about Bernie Sanders’ campaign pay and an article reporting on a threat against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also made the top five. 

The 10 Most Used Hashtags of the Week

  1. #foxnews
  2. #MAGA
  3. #Trump
  4. #protectfamilies
  5. #kag
  6. #Muellerhearings
  7. #QAnon
  8. #antifa
  9. #Iran
  10. #metoo

The top three hashtags this week – #foxnews, #maga and #Trump – are becoming a familiar sight in the upper reaches of this list, along with #QAnon. Elsewhere in the list, however, we saw some new entrants, including a variation on a Trump campaign theme (#kag, or “Keep America Great”) and a call to help keep immigrant families together in the event of their detention (#protectfamilies), amplified in large part when singer Shawn Mendes used the hashtag in one of his tweets.

In addition to the politically-leaning #Muellerhearings and #Iran hashtags, #metoo resurfaced as a trending hashtag this week, in large part due to a New Yorker article about former Senator Al Franken that reignited much of the debate around the details of his 2016 resignation.

The Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week

Two of the top five tweets of the week underlined how different groups experience different outcomes in the US justice system. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders also responded to articles about immigration and the electoral college, respectively. 

Last but not least, the second most-shared tweet of the week is a sublime piece of Twitter comedy (we hope).

1. Layers of tragedy

2. A joke that’s a little too on the nose

3. AOC continues her criticism of current immigration policies

4. Bernie makes a proposal

5. A timely reminder

Want more data-driven insights while you wait for next week’s edition of The Labs Report? Read “Election 2020: Brands on the Ballot,” our latest special report that explores how brands can leverage data-driven analytics to thrive throughout the election cycle. 

Be sure to also visit our Resource Center and get in touch with our team to find out more about how Zignal Labs can help you build and protect your brand.

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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 July 18th to July 24th, 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, 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 July 18th to July 24th, 2019, ranked by number of mentions from that date range.
The “Ten Most Used Hashtags of the Week “ are the ten hashtags that were mentioned the most on Twitter around Tweets related to news stories published by the above-mentioned publications from July 18th to July 24th, 2019, ranked by number of mentions 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 July 18th to July 24th, that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.