Twitter trends explained

On X, commonly referred to by its former name Twitter, a word, phrase, or topic that is mentioned at a greater rate than others is said to be a "trending topic" or simply a "trend". Trending topics become popular either through a concerted effort by users or because of an event that prompts people to talk about a specific topic.^[1]

Trending topics are sometimes the result of concerted efforts and manipulations by fans of certain celebrities or cultural phenomena. Twitter has altered the trend algorithm in the past to prevent manipulation of this type with limited success.^[2]

Impact

Examples of high-impact topics include the wildfires in San Diego,^[3] the earthquake in Japan,^[4] popular sporting events,^[5] and political uprisings in Iran^[6] and Egypt.^[7]

Controversies

Twitter often censors trending hashtags that are claimed to be abusive or offensive. Twitter censored the #Thatsafrican^[8] and #thingsdarkiessay hashtags after users complained that they found the hashtags offensive.^[9] There are allegations that Twitter removed #NaMOinHyd from the trending list and added an Indian National Congress-sponsored hashtag.^[10]

In 2019, 20% of the global trends were found to be fake, created automatically using fake and compromised accounts originating from Turkey. It is reported that 108,000 accounts were employed since 2015 to push 19,000 keywords such as advertisements and political campaigns, to top trends in Turkey by bulk tweeting.^[11]

See also

• Twitter usage—How various people and organizations use Twitter

Notes and References

1. Web site: Bloggers back media against youth league. https://web.archive.org/web/20110718104406/http://www.journalism.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3103&Itemid=37. July 18, 2011. dead. April 3, 2010.
2. Web site: Justin Bieber fans beat Twitter 'block' | Web User magazine. Vicky Woollaston. Webuser.co.uk. https://web.archive.org/web/20121122152133/http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/top-stories/492646/justin-bieber-fans-beat-twitter-block. November 22, 2012. dead. January 20, 2012.
3. Wang. Zheye. Ye. Xinyue. Tsou. Ming-Hsiang. 2016-08-01. Spatial, temporal, and content analysis of Twitter for wildfire hazards. Natural Hazards. en. 83. 1. 523–540. 10.1007/s11069-016-2329-6. 130442050 . 1573-0840.
4. Book: Sakaki. Takeshi. Okazaki. Makoto. Matsuo. Yutaka. Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World wide web . Earthquake shakes Twitter users . 2010. WWW '10. New York, NY, US. ACM. 851–860. 10.1145/1772690.1772777. 9781605587998. 15953846 .
5. Book: Nichols. Jeffrey. Mahmud. Jalal. Drews. Clemens. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM international conference on Intelligent User Interfaces . Summarizing sporting events using twitter . 2012. IUI '12. New York, NY, US. ACM. 189–198. 10.1145/2166966.2166999. 9781450310482. 15696890 .
6. Burns. Alex. Eltham. Ben. 2009-11-24. Twitter Free Iran: an Evaluation of Twitter's Role in Public Diplomacy and Information Operations in Iran's 2009 Election Crisis. en. University of Technology, Sydney. 322–334.
7. Choudhary. Alok. Hendrix. William. Lee. Kathy. Palsetia. Diana. Liao. Wei-Keng. 2012-05-01. Social media evolution of the Egyptian revolution. Communications of the ACM. en. 55. 5. 74. 10.1145/2160718.2160736. 41959904 .
8. News:
   1. Thatsafrican – When Twitter Went Racist?
   . Weiner. David. June 21, 2009. Huffington Post. April 3, 2010.
9. News: Thingsdarkiessay causes a Twitter storm. November 5, 2009. Independent Online. South Africa. January 11, 2012.
10. News: Role of Twitter in trending wars. Gupta. Kanchan. August 13, 2013. NITI Central. August 14, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130816010049/http://www.niticentral.com/2013/08/13/role-of-twitter-in-trending-wars-118256.html. August 16, 2013. dead. mdy-all.
11. Elmas . Tuğrulcan . Overdorf. Rebekah. Özkalay. Ahmed Furkan. Aberer. Karl . 2021 . Ephemeral Astroturfing Attacks: The Case of Fake Twitter Trends . 6th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy . Virtual. IEEE . 1910.07783 .