Welcome to the first-ever 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.

Brought to you weekly on Thursdays, track the evolution of our country’s public discourse ranging from serious news events that will shape the course of history, to feel-good stories and memes that grip the hearts and minds of the nation.

Here are the most influential stories, authors and Tweets from May 1st to May 8th, 2019.

The 5 Most-Talked-About News Stories of the Week

  1. Decade in the Red: Trump Tax Figures Show Over $1 Billion in Business Losses | The New York Times
  2. Abortions after six weeks will now be illegal in Georgia | CBS News
  3. F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016 | The New York Times
  4. Trump would have been charged with obstruction were he not president, hundreds of former federal prosecutors assert | The Washington Post
  5. John Kelly joins board of company operating largest shelter for unaccompanied migrant children | CBS News

New information around President Trump’s much-discussed financial records, published earlier this week, rocketed to the top of the week’s top stories. A CBS News story reporting on Georgia’s new, restrictive abortion bill saw a similarly precipitous rise. Other stories focused on ongoing issues related to the presidency – including investigations, immigration policies and legal woes – rounded out the week’s Top 5.  

The 10 Most Influential Authors of the Week

  1. CNN
  2. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
  3. The New York Times
  4. Washington Post
  5. CBS News
  6. CNN en Espanol
  7. MSNBC
  8. Reuters Top News
  9. NBC News
  10. Kyle Griffin

While CNN didn’t publish any of the top five stories of the week, the outlet and its Spanish-language counterpart saw high engagement (online interactions, e.g. likes, comments, Retweets, etc.) across Twitter, with other traditional outlets rounding out this week’s Top 10. The only non-outlet authors to make the Top 10 this week were MSCNBC producer Kyle Griffin (a consistently prolific Tweeter and online commentator) and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who took to Twitter to share her thoughts around the recent Georgia abortion bill (see one of her most popular Tweets around the topic below).

The 5 Most Shared Tweets of the Week

Reactions to Georgia’s latest abortion bill drove a significant amount of Twitter activity this week, with two of the week’s top Tweets discussing the implications and science behind the bill. Another two of the week’s top five tweets were politically-driven, focused on the ongoing saga of the Mueller Report and a canceled visit to New York City by the President of Brazil. Rounding out the Top 5, a feel-good story from a community in Canada.

1. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comments on Georgia’s latest abortion bill

2. The Internet loves the relationship between a Canadian woman and her community

3. More reaction to Georgia’s controversial abortion bill

4. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks out against President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil

5. Congressman Adam Schiff discusses Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the Mueller Report

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 1, 2019 to May 8, 2019. Stories are published by 25 of the most highly-read publications across the country, 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 1, 2019 to May 8, 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 1, 2019 to May 8, 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 1, 2019 to May 8, 2019, that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.