What did Inauguration Day look like on social media? We use NewsWhip Analytics for the top publishers and content around Trump’s taking office.Â
The world watched the 45th president of the United States take office on January 20th, 2017, and millions took to the social media to respond to the event in the days before and after.
Facebook engagement peaked on the 20th, but continued to stay high on the 21st as responses to the inauguration, Trump’s first days in office, and women’s marches took place around the world.
We took a look at which publishers saw the biggest social media engagement for their coverage of these events.
Top Publishers
First, we looked at publisher domains for articles and content containing keywords around the inauguration. We analyzed total Facebook engagements on these links, totaling up shares, reactions, likes, or comments.
These ten publishers saw the most activity for that content.
Check out NewsWhip Analytics to discover the top publishers and stories around any event
Big name publishers dominated the top of the list here, with NBC, the New York Times, and USA Today driving over 1.1 million Facebook engagements on their content around Inauguration Day.
Toward the bottom of the top ten, other more partisan publishers made the list. Breitbart and Occupy Democrats both drove over 850,000 Facebook engagements for their coverage.
While more social media activity was driven for nonpartisan publishers, it’s notable that these politically charged sites are still driving substantial engagement. As fake news and sensationalism are increasingly called out, it’s interesting that partisan publishers continue to see big engagement.
This could be due to the nature of social media; passionate subjects like politics can spark heated debates and responses among followers.
Looking at the content itself, we can see which stories sparked the most attention around the inauguration. Articles from smaller groups made the top ten, with one from The Indigenous Peoples and one from Blue Lives Matter on content related to their causes.
Again, partisan publishers like US Uncut and Politicus USA saw engagement and were responsible for stories in the top ten. They were balanced out by more general publishers like the Guardian, Today, and the New York Times.
As to the stories themselves, several were about the women’s marches that took place following the inauguration. One story had to do with the crowd size of the inauguration, and two had to do with members of Trump’s family: Melania and Barron Trump. Several of the other stories focused on Trump’s first actions as POTUS, including his social media usage.
As the world watches to see how Trump will take to his role as president, it’s evident from day one that charged stories are going to stay on top on Facebook.
Top Native Content on Facebook
We can look at the native content that spurred engagements as well. This could be in the form of text posts, photos, videos, external links, or events, all posted around the same inauguration keywords that we analyzed before.
Using NewsWhip Analytics, it’s a simple to take a look at the top publishers Facebook Pages.
Here, the publishers’ Facebook Pages that drove the most engagements are general news sources, not the extremely slanted ones we saw previously.
However, there is a significant gap between the top two publishers and the others in the top ten. Fox News’ main Facebook Page drove over 6.5 million Facebook engagements for inauguration content. CNN’s Facebook Page followed with 3.8 million engagements, and after that, the engagements for publishers falls behind by a notable margin.
Why might this be? Let’s take a look at the top native content for some clues.
Video and Live video ruled Inauguration Day.  BuzzFeed drove the most engagements, over 1.89 million, for a Live video countdown for the 46th President of the United States. Fox News, our top Facebook publisher, produced several Live videos around Inauguration Day. Live videos can create a boon in engagement, especially for history-making events.
https://www.facebook.com/15704546335/posts/10155020403316336Â
With 16 million views, Fox News captured engagement by providing live coverage of the inauguration. The video prompted over 558,000 likes and reactions, 143,000 shares, and 307,000 comments as Facebook users watched live while Trump was sworn into office.
Four of the top ten native posts were Live video, as publishers took their followers right into the action of the inauguration. The six other videos weren’t live – two from CNN showing Barack and Michelle Obama, and others of protests happening in response to the Inauguration.
Photos also did well for publishers. This was a photo from PBS NewsHour, showing the crowds at Trump’s inauguration on January 20th, versus Obama’s inauguration in 2009. It drove nearly 250,000 engagements on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/6491828674/posts/10154997703013675Â
Visuals can bring social media users into the moment of big, breaking news events. Formats like Live video can immerse users even further. It’s telling that several different publishers on that top ten used Live video on Inauguration Day, and Fox News even successfully experimented with Facebook’s new 360 Live video feature.
As more publishers jump in on the Live video game for breaking news and other big events, it’s going to be necessary to learn how publishers can distinguish their Live video to stand out from the others.
Like with any content, it comes down to staying savvy of what your audience wants.
Try NewsWhip Analytics to explore the social media trends of leading publishers
*article updated to reflect fuller scope of data
