The most tweeted about topic of 2016 has been revealed
Donald Trump only came 8th in the list
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.”Rio2016” was the highest globally trending topic on Twitter in 2016, while England’s defeat to Iceland in Euro 2016 was the most tweeted moment in the UK.
The top ten global trends on Twitter included four political issues, with Brexit, Trump, Election2016 and BlackLivesMatter all making the list.
All of the top ten moments with the highest volume of tweets were football-related, with seven of them during the European Championships in France.
Chilcot, JuniorDoctors and PanamaPapers made the top ten political trends in the UK, with Brexit being number one.
RIP was the ninth highest global trend, with David Bowie, Muhammad Ali, Prince as well as Alan Rickman and Leonard Cohen just some of the many icons to have passed away in 2016.
A viral star from Spain called @elrubius had the most retweeted tweet of the year, drawing upon a YouTube subscriber base of 21m fans to retweet a tweet of his 1.38m times.
Old flame of Taylor Swift, Harry Styles celebrated his 22nd birthday with a tweet referencing the song ‘22’ by Swift, in the second most retweeted tweet of the year:
While Hillary Clinton’s post-election message for young girls took third place with 634,560 retweets:
Leicester City’s celebratory tweet as they became Premier League champions for the first time ever was the most retweeted sport-related tweet sent globally in the year.
The most retweeted video on Twitter was a thank-you message from One Direction to their fans after six years of music, closely followed by this video of a cat in a basket of chicklings:
The Top 10 global trends on Twitter in full were:
- Rio2016
- Election2016
- PokemonGo
- Euro2016
- Oscars
- Brexit
- BlackLivesMatter
- Trump
- RIP
- GameofThrones
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments