How Iran keeps topping Trending Topics in Cable News Twitter (1/29/15)

Cable News Trending Topics for 2015-01-29

Once again Obama and Iran ended up at the top of the trending topics.  I wanted to know why Iran is showing up, given that there’s very little actual news these days about the country or the talks.  It turns out that it’s pretty much what happens when no topics really dominate the news — a few tweets that target the media as a whole get heavily retweeted. In this case, we have tweets like these:

The original sender is in Iran and is unlikely to be responding to CNN or Fox News; rather, they are carpet bombing Twitter.  If it were a heavy news day, these would be lost, but on a quiet day they rise to the top.  When you combine that with some more organic content, like this tweet…

… you end up topping the topics for the day.

Here’s the chart of the top 30 words and hashtags for the day:

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Raw data: 2015-01-29-TagStats.csv and 2015-01-29-WordStats.csv

Top Shows for the day:

Category Mentions Show
Most Mentions During Hour 2765 Fox News: The Kelly File
Most Mentions During Day 9071 Fox News: The Five w/Hosts

Overall ratings by network

Network Tweet Count Unique Tweeters Reach Male Female
Fox News 64774 28851 278405529 63 % 37 %
CNN 41948 26169 811331896 58 % 42 %
MSNBC 32454 14355 188546076 53 % 47 %
Comedy Central 5004 3658 45374085 61 % 39 %
HLN 4971 3559 33065258 50 % 50 %
Al Jazeera 2039 1524 12438551 56 % 44 %
HBO 1370 1100 9800121 63 % 37 %

Most popular hashtags

Hashtag Count
#iran 4447
#tcot 4095
#kellyfile 4022
#irantalks 3812
#lnyhbt 2323
#inners 2209
#maddow 1825
#taliban 1801
#bergdahl 1747
#hannity 1715

Tag Cloud across all shows

#2016fantasydraft #2a #aaronhernandez #ac360 #airasia #aljazeera #americansniper #auschwitz70 #b1less #bergdahl #bowebergdahl #breakabillion #breaking #c2gthr #cashinin #ccot #cdcwhistleblower #chriskyle #cnn #dhsin2015 #disclosure #edshow #etsy #ferguson #findaysia #fnpolitics #foxnews #gop #greta #h4ead #h4eadjan15 #hannity #hardball #hezbollah #humansofnewyork #inners #insideman #iran #iranian #irantalks #irantalksvienna #isis #israel #keepit100 #kellyfile #kenjigoto #keystonexl #lastword #lnyhbt #lorettalynch #maddow #makingithappen #measles #measlesoutbreak #medicaltourism #mh370 #middleeast #morningjoe #msnbc #nerdland #newday #news #nightlyshow #nyc #obama #outnumbered #p2 #pjnet #politicalpanel #qz8501 #realtime #redeye #rednationrising #rfdno #ronation #scandai #scandal #sisterpatriots #sotu #specialreport #standwithisrael #superbowl #superbowlxlix #taliban #tbt #tcot #tdsbreakingnews #teamedshow #teaparty #tgdn #thankyou #thefive #thelead #tlot #uniteblue #uniteright #usa #voicesofauschwitz #yale #yemen

 

Word Cloud across all shows

2016 against air america american anti anybody anything app back behind bergdahl bill breaking care children co day et first found fox front go going good gop great group house iran isis just know last lead life like love make man may members money much must need never new news now obama old one pentagon people photo pipeline please police politicians president put racist rare really retweet right run said say says see senate show son spotted still take taliban tehran tell terror terrorism terrorist think time today tonight tv us want war watch way white will year years yes