The Top 10 Stories on Social Media in 2015

Shortly after the Paris terrorist attacks, The New York Times analyzed media coverage of the attacks (with a little help from the TrackMaven software platform). The effort placed media coverage of the attack in context, illustrating its gravity; in 2015, Paris was the only news event to register among the year’s top stories from major Internet and media companies.

On social media, some stories transmute into bottled lightning, while others wither in obscurity. After all, stories are a form of social communion. Maria Konnikova explains the gripping, sometimes-bewitching power of stories in her book, “The Confidence Game: Why We Fall For It… Every Time”:

“Stories bring us together. We can talk about them and bond over them. They are shared knowledge, shared legend, and shared history; often, they shape our shared future. Stories are so natural that we don’t notice how much they permeate our lives.”

So which stories gripped our imaginations (and our news feeds) in 2015? We used data from the TrackMaven software platform to find out. Here are the top 10 stories on social media in 2015:

The top 10 news stories on Twitter in 2015

1. 51.7K interactions via Forbes:

Justin Bieber’s “Purpose” has broken Spotify’s record for most streams in one week https://t.co/fUXSGV1HKE pic.twitter.com/BDQiICZC7M

— Forbes (@Forbes) November 23, 2015

2. 36.8K interactions via USA Today:

.@justinbieber‘s not sorry he’s topping the charts. pic.twitter.com/iGGpoFL1OS

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) December 4, 2015

3. 34.2K interactions via BuzzFeed:

Zendaya Wrote A Powerful Defense Of Her Dreadlocks After Racist Comments On Fashion Police http://t.co/xfAJR5IePT pic.twitter.com/xtn8e75nn8

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) February 24, 2015

4. 25.7K interactions via BuzzFeed:

Taylor Swift tracked down a fan at the Grammys so she could take her backstage http://t.co/sAsiKzNSOK pic.twitter.com/rWHixnHQk1

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) February 10, 2015

5. 24.9 interactions via BuzzFeed:

Justin Timberlake Almost Accepted Taylor Swift’s iHeartRadio Award http://t.co/51pPoPVuBO https://t.co/jGQQEaNPo6

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) March 30, 2015

6. 24.6K interactions via The New York Times:

President Obama on Paris: “An attack on all of humanity” https://t.co/J4EsLVWZvf pic.twitter.com/msyECQzYD8

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 13, 2015

7. 23.3K interactions via BuzzFeed:

Husband of 9/11 hero returns “Woman of the Year” award after Caitlyn Jenner received one https://t.co/Om2Vby92Me pic.twitter.com/yMxurgS0dW

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) November 16, 2015

8. 22.5K interactions via BBC News:

Eiffel Tower lights up in French colours after dimming its lights in mourning https://t.co/YdwInZJjX9 #ParisAttacks pic.twitter.com/aXRjOKjU2A

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) November 16, 2015

9. 22.5K interactions via CNN:

One World Trade Center is lit up in France’s tricolors tonight: red, white and blue https://t.co/Ds8Rqs1SUe #Paris pic.twitter.com/4b02C8NzRp

— CNN (@CNN) November 14, 2015

10. 22.4K interactions via BBC News:

Sydney Opera House lit up by French tricolour amid #ParisAttacks global tributes https://t.co/ZqI2gsRmnA pic.twitter.com/UIrOt9mp2B

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) November 14, 2015

Takeaways from the top 10 Twitter stories

Celebrity news = share-worthy news. Justin Bieber drives engagement for Forbes, and Taylor Swift is a bankable topic for BuzzFeed.

Among more substantive (or non-celebrity) news — as The New York Times concluded, and we confirm above — coverage of the Paris attacks is the only news event to rank among the year’s top stories. CNN, BBC News, and The New York Times all delivered top 10 tweets on developing coverage of the attacks.

The top 10 news stories on Facebook in 2015

1. 2.7M interactions via BBC News:

2. 2.1M interactions via BBC News:

3. 1.7M interactions via ABC News:

4. 1.6M interactions via ABC News:

5. 1.2M interactions via BuzzFeed:

6. 1.2M interactions via USA Today:

7. 1.1M interactions via CBS News:

8. 686K interactions via ABC News:

9. 640K interactions via ABC News:

10. 621K interactions via Fox News:

Takeaways from the top 10 Facebook stories

Sentimentality sells. While Twitter’s top stories dealt with celebrity or breaking news, Facebook’s topics err on the side of sentimentality. With posts ranked third, fourth, and ninth, ABC News is especially expert at elevating heartwarming human-interest stories into viral phenomena.

And while news outlets including CNN, BBC News, and The New York Times had top stories on Twitter covering the the Paris attacks themselves, ABC News and Fox News made waves on Facebook with coverage of the subsequent bombing of ISIS strongholds (ranked ninth and tenth).

What does it say about our online culture that a bulldog in roller skates (see number 2) ranks above coverage of terrorist attacks as a top-engaging 2015 story on Facebook? Perhaps it reflects a healthy, human balance between gravity and levity. Perhaps it reflects our ever-shortening attention spans. I’ll leave the judgments up to you. Regardless, there’s much to learn from the stories that popped (and the stories that flopped) in 2015. To see the top posts from leading brands in your industry, request your free custom demo of the TrackMaven platform.

Methodology

We used the TrackMaven software platform to analyze the social media posts from major Internet and media companies across all of 2015. Stories published early in 2015 have a natural advantage to accumulate more social engagement; however, the data highlight the impact of major stories from the second half of 2015, such as the Paris attacks.

Total interactions includes likes, shares, and comments on Facebook, and retweets and favorites on Twitter. Clicking the interaction total (i.e. 593K interactions) in each list will show you the post in the TrackMaven software platform. The relative impact score in the top right corner of each post is a TrackMaven metric which measures how many more (or fewer) interactions a post has compared with the brand’s average (see below).

The top tweet of the year from Forbes, for example, has a “239X” relative impact score, meaning the tweet had 239 times as many interactions as the brand’s average.

Our analysis includes the following Internet and media companies:

1. ABC News
2. BBC News
3. Bloomberg
4. Business Insider
5. Buzzfeed
6. CBS News
7. CNN
8. Forbes
9. Fox News
10. Huffington Post
11. LA Times
12. Mashable
13. Mic
14. NBC News
15. Politico
16. Quartz
17. Telegraph
18. The Atlantic
19. The Daily Beast
20. The Guardian
21. The New York Times
22. The Wall Street Journal
23. The Washington Post
24. TIME
25. USA Today
26. Vice
27. Vox Media
28. Yahoo News

Want to see the top posts from brands in your industry? Request your free custom demo to see TrackMaven in action!