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 November 21st to November 26th, 2019.

Note: Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, we’re publishing The Labs Report one day early this week. As a result, the data in this report is for the past six days, rather than the typical seven-day cycle we typically examine.  

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

  1. Giuliani associate willing to tell Congress Nunes met with ex-Ukrainian official to get dirt on Biden | CNN
  2. Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says | The New York Times
  3. White House review turns up emails showing extensive effort to justify Trump’s decision to block Ukraine military aid | The Washington Post
  4. Navy Is Said to Proceed With Disciplinary Plans Against Edward Gallagher | The New York Times
  5. Russia Inquiry Review Is Said to Criticize F.B.I. but Rebuff Claims of Biased Acts | The New York Times

With the Congressional impeachment hearings out of the way – and out of the headlines – the Trump administration might have been hoping for a week of soft-focus, Presidential turkey-pardon-related headlines in the run-up to Thanksgiving. Alas, it was not to be, as a series of Russia- and Ukraine-related stories dominated the week on social media, along with the burgeoning furor over the President’s decision to offer leniency to a Navy SEAL.

CNN led the way in terms of generating the most-talked-about story of the week, with its splash on alleged ties between Congressman Devin Nunes and those at the heart of efforts to dig up dirt on the Biden family – the very issue that Nunes was investigating in his role as the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

Elsewhere, The New York Times scooped three of the top five most-talked-about stories of the week. Two of the pieces concern Russia: one is about an alleged disinformation campaign to pin the blame for electoral meddling on Ukraine; the other details findings of a government review indicating that political bias played no role in the origins of the FBI’s initial Russia probe.

Finally, The Washington Post also scored a top five hit this week, with a piece on a review of White House emails related to the Trump administration’s decision to block aid to Ukraine earlier this year. 

The 10 Most Used Hashtags of the Week

  1. #FoxNews
  2. #Stop
  3. #NewEconForum
  4. #China
  5. #MarkZuckerberg
  6. #SiliconSix
  7. #DevinNunesGotCaught
  8. #Breaking
  9. #DirtyDevin
  10. #NunesResign

What a difference a week can make: last week’s top 10 had six hashtags related to #China and the ongoing crisis in Hong Kong. This week: just one, as two trending news events drove Hong Kong out of the public consciousness. Those events: the Devin Nunes story (#DevinNunesGotCaught, #DirtyDevin and #NunesResign) and a Washington Post editorial by Sacha Baron Cohen on the ways in which he believes tech companies are undercutting democracy (#MarkZuckerberg and #SiliconSix).

Elsewhere, we saw the rise of the gnomic #Stop – a hashtag that has been used for many purposes, from protests against animal cruelty to, well, almost anything else that someone would like to see stopped. #NewEconForum also made a new entry this week, due to a flurry of interest in the New Economic Forum – a sort of Davos-lite conference started by now-official candidate for President Michael Bloomberg.

The Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week

Devin Nunes’ bad week wasn’t just confined to the newspapers and hashtags: commentary on allegations that he was directly involved in trying to dig up dirt on the Bidens also fueled the week’s most-shared tweet.

And it’s not like it was a slow news week: attention on Nunes beat out tweets from MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on “Kremlin propaganda,” former president Obama on gerrymandering and a story about a dog driving a car. For an hour. In reverse.

1. Ryan Lizza Sums Up the Nunes Story

2. Maddow talks propaganda

3. We’re pretty sure this is a feel-good story…

4. …and definitely sure this isn’t

5. “Florida’s best driver” contest finds an unlikely winner

Want more while you wait for next week’s edition of The Labs Report? Check out our data-driven analysis of November’s presidential debate, take a read through our latest Story of a Hashtag analysis on #TeamTrees and learn how you can become the adoption champion your team needs.

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 is informed by a 10% sampling of Twitter activity around news stories published from November 21st  to November 26th, 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 November 21st  to November 26th, 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 November 21st  to November 26th, 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 November 21st  to November 26th, 2019 that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.