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 October 10th to October 16th, 2019.

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

  1. Macabre Video of Fake Trump Shooting Media and Critics Is Shown at His Resort | The New York Times
  2. Bolton Objected to Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Calling Giuliani ‘a Hand Grenade’ | The New York Times
  3. Two Giuliani Associates Who Helped Him on Ukraine Charged With Campaign-Finance Violations | The Wall Street Journal
  4. Former Fort Worth police officer charged with murder for killing Atatiana Jefferson in her own home | CNN
  5. Abandoned by U.S. in Syria, Kurds Find New Ally in American Foe | The New York Times

The top story of the week is The New York Times’ coverage of a violent video depicting the President slaughtering his critics. While the video was obviously fake, the graphic imagery displayed in relation to media outlets and prominent Democratic politicians led to widespread condemnation.

Rudy Giuliani had something of a bad week, with two of the top five stories concerning his involvement in the ever-growing Ukraine scandal. News that two of his associates had been arrested on campaign finance charges spread like wildfire, with his seemingly compromised position in the aftermath of that revelation likely responsible for the leak of former national security advisor John Bolton’s strident appraisal of Giuliani’s actions.

Rounding out our list were stories that, in times not-so-long gone by, would likely have led the media cycle for weeks: CNN’s piece on a police shooting in Fort Worth and The New York Times’ examination of the rapidly-evolving conditions in Syria following the unexpected withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region.

The 10 Most Used Hashtags of the Week

  1. #FoxNews
  2. #DemDebate
  3. #AtatianaJefferson
  4. #Trump
  5. #Syria
  6. #HongKong
  7. #OneVoice1
  8. #Breaking
  9. #MAGA
  10. #ImpeachTrump

This week’s collection of trending hashtags provides a great lens for looking at what’s been happening in the news in the midst of a truly hectic cycle. 

First, consider that #breaking (aka “breaking news”) made it into the top 10 – as clear an indicator as any of the rapidly evolving conditions throughout the week. Then, consider that #DemDebate and #HongKong were at number 2 and 8 respectively – both items were featured prominently across the media landscape this week without having any one article to drive them forward. 

Elsewhere, #AtatianaJefferson, #Syria and #ImpeachTrump rounded out the list of news-driven terms for a fairly complete picture of the issues that have been in the public eye this week. 

The Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week

The most-shared tweets this week were a very mixed bag. Ice Cube led the week with a pithy response to a police shooting in Texas that referenced courtroom scenes in the recent Amber Guyger trial.

Next up, a tweet that was deleted before we (although apparently not thousands of others) got to see it. We’d love to show it to you, but some things apparently do not live forever on the internet.

Elsewhere, we saw a pair of tweets from Donald Trump and Donald Jr. rise to the top five – the former tweeting about Brazil’s OECD application that otherwise escaped this roundup’s attention, and the latter a good, old-fashioned piece of political mudslinging from one prominent politician’s son to another.

And the final tweet this week is our personal favorite: a response to the annual “bad people are putting (x) in your kids’ Halloween candy” that should be stored and hauled out every year.

1. Ice Cube makes a splash

2. We have no idea what this tweet said, but it was crazy popular

3. OECD dispute

4. DTJ is no fan of conflicts of interest

5. Won’t someone think of the…economics?

Want more while you wait for next week’s edition of The Labs Report? Check out our latest special report, “The Next Decade of Communications: Data Analytics Trends and Takeaways for 2020 and Beyond.”

Be sure to also take a read through our latest presidential debate debrief blog, peruse tips for your 2020 comms budget planning and learn more about how Zignal helps brand leaders become more successful.

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 October 10th to October 16th, 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 October 10th to October 16th, 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 October 10th to October 16th, 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 October 10th to October 16th, 2019 that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.