2014 was at some times a bitter pill and others, a sweet cocktail. We’ll take a look at social media this past year, and survey through the glories and sorrows of the major news events.
The Top 5 searches globally on Twitter were Robin Williams, World Cup, the Ebola outbreak, Malaysia Airlines flight, and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral.
Here, in South Africa, the Oscar Pistorius trial tops the top 5 current affairs topics, followed by ebola, the general
elections, the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines plane, and the AMCU strike.
The top 3 political parties in South Africa will be happy to see their leaders in the top 3 of trending politicans on Google – Julius Malema, Jacob Zuma, and Musi Mmaimane.
Top 5 searches in South Africa were Senzo Meyiwa, ebola, Robin Williams, Oscar Pistorius and the World Cup.
Most striking from the Google statistics is the following screenshot, looking at the top five “what is…” questions on
Google searches:
Moving to YouTube, ‘Juju’ didn’t stray far from the spotlight, coming in third on the top trending videos of 2014 in
South Africa. In second place was the animation of Oscar Pistorius shooting Reeva Steenkamp, and the champion is the dark humour of “Noko vs Izikhothane”.
Over on Twitter, Ellen DeGeneres managed to bring to its knees the microblogging platform with this year’s “Golden Tweet”:
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014
This update was retweeted close to 3.4million times on Twitter!
The #YearOnTwitter hashtag reveals the remaining most popular topics – the World Cup, #BringBackOurGirls, #IndyRef (Scottish vote on referendum), Hong Kong protests, and #BlackLivesMatter.
For us South Africans, the World Cup and the Springbok team’s rugby performances were the most important topics this year on Twitter.
Finally, looking at Facebook, we see again familiar faces, but with some new topics, given the platform’s appetite for debate on political issues. In sixth and ninth positions, respectively, the Gaza conflict and Michael Brown/Ferguson feature on this list, with the Sochi Winter Olympics in tenth place.
– By Mina Demian – @minaddotcom
