THE TWEET THAT announced the death of US actor Chadwick Boseman is the most shared tweet of the year, and the most ‘liked’ tweet ever.

Boseman, the star of the blockbuster superhero movie Black Panther, died of colon cancer in August after being diagnosed with the illness four years ago.

Tweeted by the actor’s family from his account, the message that announced his death and paid tribute to Boseman as “a true fighter” garnered 7.5 million likes – the most all-time – and 3.1 million retweets.

Former US president Barack Obama’s tweet about the death of basketball superstar Kobe Bryant was the second-most like tweet of the year, with 3.9 million ‘likes’.

Bryant’s death made his former Los Angeles Lakers team the most tweeted-about sports team, followed by Manchester United and FC Barcelona. 

BLM and the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement topped the list of conversation topics on Twitter in a tumultuous year, the messaging platform said today.

In a summary of trends, Twitter said the hashtag #Covid19 and other variations were tweeted nearly 400 million times, while #StayHome was the third biggest hashtag of the year.

The number two hashtag of 2020 was #BlackLivesMatter, which spread worldwide after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, according to Twitter.

“People continued to utilize Twitter to publicly advocate for political change and demand accountability from world leaders this year,” a Twitter blog post said.

Over 700 million Tweets were sent in 2020 about elections around the world and Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Narendra Modi and Kamala Harris were among the most Tweeted-about global figures.

The phrase ‘essential/frontline workers’ was tweeted more than 17 million times this year.

 © AFP 2020