The outlet we chose to discuss a trending topic on Twitter was the New York Times. We chose the New York Times as our outlet because of its reliable and up to date daily news. Millions of users choose the times because of its worldwide coverage and various sections such as arts and business.
The trending topic we found from our research on CrowdTangle, using the NY Times as our outlet, was the recent murder and torture of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi on October 2nd. Jamal Khashoggi’s death was a global mystery that the world was waiting to uncover. Updates on his death were covered by the New York Times, as tweets and links to articles were sent out via Twitter.
The highest amount of interactions they received was from the breaking news about Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance. This specific tweet posted on October 17th had 10.1k comments, 8,696 retweets and 8,145 likes.
Breaking News: Audio confirms Jamal Khashoggi was tortured and dismembered, a Turkish official said, revealing gruesome details and contradicting Saudi denials https://t.co/l0jH0qRRnE
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 17, 2018
We learned from this trending topic’s success that the highest amount of interactions occurs when the news initially breaks. We learned that the highest coverage and interaction rates came when evidence about Khashoggi’s death was uncovered. Most Twitter followers cared about the disappearance in its initial reports. We analyzed how Jamal Khashoggi’s death and disappearance only received high interaction rates when the news was considered “breaking”, compared to other less important tweets of Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance. Therefore, the language used in the tweet affects the amount of user engagement. Other tweets found with lower amounts of interactions, did not have as strong language.
The Search Boolean we used in the advanced Twitter search were the hashtags “#Jamal” OR “#Khashoggi” from NYTimes, dates 10/10 to 10/17. The engagement criteria we set in TweetDeck was to follow the highest number of retweets, likes and comments exceeding 100 likes, replies and retweets.
Breaking News: 4 suspects identified by Turkey in the disappearance of a Saudi dissident, Jamal Khashoggi, have connections to the crown prince https://t.co/Fmd4nsRFuV
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 16, 2018
The insight we gained from the trend was seeing how a global breaking news story evolves and how engagement rates rise during the times when the news matters the most.
Group Members
- Kate Florin
- Julia Zucker
- Josh Goldberg
- Jordyn Gelb
- Will Zeitler