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 September 19th to September 25th, 2019.

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

 

  1. Greta Thunberg: “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood” | CNN
  2. Trump Repeatedly Pressed Ukraine President to Investigate Biden’s Son | The Wall Street Journal
  3. Trump’s $28 Billion Bet That Rural America Will Stick With Him | Bloomberg Businessweek
  4. Trump ordered hold on military aid days before calling Ukrainian president, officials say | The Washington Post
  5. Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress, former officials say | The Washington Post

Everywhere you look in the top 5 this week, cataclysm is the order of the day. From Greta Thunberg’s remarkable, emotional appeal to the UN, to the rapidly evolving Trump-Ukraine-impeachment process story, the past week has been marked by a sense that the world as we know it is coming to an end.

Not that we’re predicting end times or anything: indeed, the third-most-shared story of the week, from Bloomberg Businessweek, is a fascinating analysis of the likely voting habits of rural populations–a key voting bloc for President Trump in 2016–as they cope with the realities created by the trade/tariff war with China. So at least someone thinks that we’ll still be around come November 2020.

Elsewhere, three of the top five stories concern Ukraine-gate (if we’re not already calling it that, it’s only a matter of time), but the number one spot goes to CNN’s piece on Thunberg. That’s right: an article on climate change beat out the possible impeachment of a US President for top spot. We can’t decide whether that’s encouraging, or evidence that we are indeed living in the darkest timeline imaginable.

The 10 Most Used Hashtags of the Week

 

  1. #FoxNews
  2. #WhistleBlowerComplaint
  3. #ImpeachTrump
  4. #Trump
  5. #ClimateStrike
  6. #Impeachment
  7. #MAGA
  8. #WhistleBlower
  9. #OneVoice1
  10. #Ukraine

As with the top articles, the Ukraine story also features prominently in this week’s hashtag roundup. Direct references feature in no fewer than five of the top ten hashtags–#WhistleBlowerComplaint, #ImpeachTrump, #Impeachment, #WhistleBlower, and #Ukraine–while it’s a safe bet that the #Trump hashtag was inundated with people having their say on the issue as well. 

Elsewhere, the #ClimateStrike made some impact–although perhaps not as much as might have been expected given the global nature of the protests.

The remainder of the list, meanwhile, went to old standbys #FoxNews, #MAGA, and #OneVoice1, proving that, no matter what happens in the world, tweets about it will have one or more of those hashtags appended to it.

The Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week

 

In terms of shared tweets, Greta Thunberg and the climate march were the biggest stories of the week, occupying two of the top five spots. The first, from CNN, included a made-to-go-viral video clip, while the second saw Thunberg leveraging her own social media reach to spread her message.

Chanel Miller, a victim of sexual assault in a high-profile case in 2015, also had a viral moment this week as she began the attempt to reclaim her identity and tell her side of a story that has indelibly marked her life.

Finally, the remaining two tweets shed light on otherwise underreported stories, in very different ways. While the first used righteous anger to draw attention to a senseless tragedy, the second was simply a senseless use of a social media platform.

1. Greta Dresses Down the UN

2. Chanel Miller reclaims her identity

3. A strong response to a tragedy

*Potentially offensive language is blurred in this tweet.

4. Direct action

5. A Twitter story in 3 acts

Act 1: A not-very-popular tweet from CNN

Act 2: A since-deleted viral response

Act 3:

Want more data-driven insights while you wait for next week’s edition of The Labs Report? Read our debrief blog on last week’s Democratic debate, check out our data-driven analysis of the new partnership between the NFL and Reddit, or read our Story of a Hashtag blog post to learn more about the rise of #MoscowMitch.

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 September 19th to September 25th, 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 September 19th to September 25th, 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 September 19th to September 25th, 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 September 19th to September 25th, 2019, that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.