Welcome to this week’s 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.

Here’s what was trending on Twitter from May 16th to May 22th, 2019.

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

  1. A pregnant 11-year-old rape victim in Ohio would no longer be allowed to have an abortion under new state law | CBS News
  2. Trump May Be Preparing Pardons for Servicemen Accused of War Crimes | The New York Times
  3. Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts | The New York Times
  4. Navy SEALs Were Warned Against Reporting Their Chief for War Crimes | The New York Times
  5. A proposed bill will make animal cruelty a federal felony | CNN

Last week, the sudden spate of restrictive abortion bills cropping up around the country dominated the five most-talked-about stories of the week. While this week saw a little more variety, CBS News’ story on Ohio’s abortion bill remained in our top five for the second week in a row, this week taking the top spot.

Two articles reporting on different facets of an emerging Navy SEALs war crimes scandal were also highly discussed this week, with news about a proposed animal cruelty bill and further suspicions around President Trump rounding out the top five.

The 10 Most Influential Authors of the Week

  1. CNN
  2. The New York Times
  3. Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1)
  4. The Washington Post
  5. MSNBC
  6. diana (@DlANADEE)
  7. Reuters Top News
  8. George Conway (@gtconway3d)
  9. Bloomberg
  10. juïce (@JuiceTooWavie)

This week’s top ten most influential authors included CNN, who retained the top spot for three weeks running, the usual major news outlets and Twitter users with some of the most popular Tweets of the week.

The Five Most Shared Tweets of the Week

Reactions to Ohio’s new abortion restrictions, reported by CBS News last week, dominated the most shared tweets of the week. A little levity by way of praise for a proposed animal cruelty bill, discussed above, also made it into the top five.

1. Contrasting the political movement around gun ownership and abortion laws

2. Celebrating the news of a proposed bill to better protect animals

*Potentially offensive language is blurred in the above image.

3. Another highly-shared reaction to Ohio’s new abortion bill

*Potentially offensive language is blurred in the above image.

4. Reaction to CBS News’ article about new Ohio’s abortion bill (in the top five for the second week in a row)

5. Additional commentary on Ohio’s new abortion bill

*Potentially offensive language is blurred in the above image.

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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 May 16, 2019 to May 22, 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 May 16, 2019 to May 22, 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 16, 2019 to May 22, 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 16, 2019 to May 22, 2019, that received the most Retweets, ranked by number of Retweets from that date range.