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 28th to December 4th, 2019.

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

  1. Barr doesn’t accept key inspector general finding about FBI’s Russia investigation | The Washington Post
  2. Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance | The New York Times
  3. House GOP members are ‘absolutely disgusted and exhausted’ by Trump’s behavior, former GOP congressman | CNN
  4. Lisa Page says Trump tweet attacks are ‘like being punched in the gut’ | The New York Post
  5. Schiff’s impeachment hearings wasting time when Congress must do real work | The New York Post

Welcome back to the Labs Report – we hope you had a nice Thanksgiving! In a week where we’re typically distracted by overdoses of food and shopping, all of the top stories this past week continued to be related to the impeachment trial.

In terms of outlets, The New York Post had a better week than we’ve seen recently, thanks in no small part to the President himself (see below). The Washington Post, meanwhile, snagged the top spot with a story about the findings of the FBI’s Russia investigation. Just like our leftovers, we can’t wait until we can move onto something different. 

The 10 Most Used Hashtags of the Week

  1. #FoxNews
  2. #HongKong
  3. #Trump
  4. #Thanksgiving
  5. #China
  6. #MAGA
  7. #OneVoice1
  8. #CCP
  9. #HongKongHumanRightsandDemocracyAct
  10. #11thHour

The week’s top hashtags are something of a mixed bag. Trump-related hashtags took two of the top 10 spots (#Trump and #Maga), while China and Hong Kong combined for four of them (#HongKong, #China, #CCP and #HongKongHumanRightsandDemocracyAct). Driving those last four was commentary on news items about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) treatment of Uighur minorities, as well as the still-uncertain political situation in Hong Kong.

Elsewhere, we had a notable new entrant in 10th place, as MSNBC’s #11thHour show rode a series of popular tweets to grab the final spot on the list this week. Whether that’s a blip or evidence of a new social strategy for the show remains to be seen.

The Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week

With the Thanksgiving holiday taking people away from their devices so they could, uh, argue with family members face to face, it was a relatively slow week for viral tweets. 

However, the Trump administration didn’t let us down: every one of this week’s top tweets was about the President in one way or another – and two of them were both about and by the President. We’re not sure if that’s a first, but the longer the impeachment trial drags on, the less likely it seems that it’ll be the last.

1. The President helps his hometown paper go viral

2. Rep. Jim Jordan weighs in on Lisa Page

3. Another struggling NY-based news outfit gets the Trump bump

4. The Republican response to impeachment proves popular

5. That’s 5 for 5 in Trump-related top tweets

Want more while you wait for next week’s edition of The Labs Report? Test your knowledge on deepfakes, 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.

–
Methodology: The data which drives this series is informed by a 10% sampling of Twitter activity around news stories published from November 28th  to December 4th, 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 28th  to December 4th, 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 28th  to December 4th, 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 28th  to December 4th, 2019 that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.