# A Comprehensive Analysis of Twitter Trending Topics

**Authors:** Issa Annamoradnejad, Jafar Habibi  
**arXiv:** [1907.09007](https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.09007)  
**Date:** 2019-07-21  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/paper/1907.09007v2/

## Key points

- Trending topics on Twitter refer to names, phrases, or topics mentioned at a higher rate than others on the platform.
- They have the power to promote public events, including natural disasters, political scandals, market changes, and breaking news.
- Limited research has been conducted on understanding the dynamics of trending topics on Twitter.
- The authors conducted an extensive analysis of Twitter's trending topics in 2018 using the trends API.
- Six criteria were used for analyzing their dataset: lexical analysis, time to reach the top trend list, trend reoccurrence, duration of trending time, tweet count, and language analysis.
- 77.6% of topics that reached the Top-10 list had less than 100k tweets associated with them.
- Over 50% of these topics were unable to maintain their position as a top trend for more than an hour.
- English accounted for approximately 40% of the first rank topics while Arabic comprised around 20%, suggesting their significant role in shaping Twitter's trending topics during the analyzed period.
- The comprehensive analysis sheds light on various aspects of Twitter's trending topics in 2018 and provides valuable insights into how trends emerge and evolve on the platform.

## Summary

In their article titled "A Comprehensive Analysis of Twitter Trending Topics," authors Issa Annamoradnejad and Jafar Habibi explore the dynamics of trending topics on Twitter. They highlight that a trending topic refers to a name, phrase, or topic that is mentioned at a higher rate than others on the platform. These trends have the power to promote public events, including natural disasters, political scandals, market changes, and breaking news. Despite the significant impact of trending topics on Twitter, there has been limited research focused on understanding their dynamics. To address this gap, the authors conducted an extensive analysis of Twitter's trending topics in 2018. They accessed Twitter's trends API and collected data on the top 50 trending topics, creating a unique dataset for their study. The authors propose six criteria for analyzing their dataset: lexical analysis, time to reach the top trend list, trend reoccurrence, duration of trending time, tweet count and language analysis. Based on their findings they report that 77.6% of the topics that reached the Top-10 list had less than 100k tweets associated with them. Additionally over 50% of these topics were unable to maintain their position as a top trend for more than an hour. Language analysis revealed that English accounted for approximately 40% of the first rank topics while Arabic comprised around 20%. This suggests that these two languages played a significant role in shaping Twitter's trending topics during the analyzed period. Overall this comprehensive analysis sheds light on various aspects of Twitter's trending topics in 2018. The findings provide valuable insights into how trends emerge and evolve on the platform and contribute to our understanding of social media dynamics in relation to public events and breaking news.