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 articles, stories and authors of the week.

Here’s what was trending on Twitter from May 30th to June 5th, 2019.

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

  1. Titanic II could set sail by 2022, following original route | CBS News
  2. A ‘Bridge’ to China, and Her Family’s Business, in the Trump Cabinet | The New York Times
  3. Botched family reunifications left migrant children waiting in vans overnight | NBC News
  4. White House Wanted USS John McCain ‘Out of Sight’ During Trump Japan Visit | The Wall Street Journal
  5. To Stop Border Crossings, the U.S. Made the Journey Deadlier | The New York Times

The top story of the week, providing delightful joke fodder for comedians the world over, is about the Titanic II, a replica of the original, ill-fated vessel which plans to make its maiden journey across the Atlantic by 2022. Stories about bad behavior in the Trump administration, as well as continued fallout from the surge of migrants attempting to cross the Southern border, round out our top five.

The 10 Most Influential Authors of the Week

  1. CNN
  2. صير عالم ٩ ٩ ٩  (@champagnefala7i)
  3. The New York Times
  4. The Washington Post
  5. NBC News
  6. MSNBC
  7. Reuters Top News
  8. Bloomberg
  9. CNN en Español
  10. Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans)

Once again the most influential author of the week, CNN just edged out Twitter user @champagnefala7i, who was catapulted to the number two spot thanks to his popular reaction to news of the Titanic II. Chris Evans’ highly-shared Tweet also bumped him into the top ten, while the rest of the top spots were filled by the usual suspects.

The Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week

While not quite matching last week’s run, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez still made it into this week’s top five with her commentary on the Elaine Chao controversy. Other popular Tweets this week included two jokes about melted icebergs, Chris Evans’ scathing callout of three men in Boston and uproar over the prosecution of an aid worker.

1. One less thing for Titanic II’s passengers to worry about 

2. Chris Evans lampoons plans for a  ‘Straight Pride Parade’

3. Variation on a theme – another joke about the Titanic II’s unobstructed path across the Atlantic

4. Surfacing the story of an aid worker on trial for providing aid

5. AOC continues her streak of popular political commentary

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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 May 30, 2019 to June 5, 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 May 30, 2019 to June 5, 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 30, 2019 to June 5, 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 30, 2019 to June 5, 2019, that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.