The most engaging theme of 2024 was politics. Audiences spent more than 188 million minutes engaging with political stories on our list, driven primarily by worldwide coverage of the US presidential election.
In the top ten alone, we have stories on the assassination attempt at a Trump rally, Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the race, and Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's lone debate.
What was happening on social?
The media publisher that posted the most about the attempted Trump assassination on YouTube was Sky News Australia. Out of the top ten publishers, seven were Indian and only two were American: CBS News and Forbes Breaking News.
Throughout the entire year, the assassination attempt would remain as the topic with the highest viewership across all the candidates—peaking at 6.4 billion TikTok views in a single week.
The most engaging story of the year is CNN’s “The father of the Georgia school shooting suspect has been arrested and charged, authorities say.” Coverage of the shooting and its aftermath from ABC News and The Washington Post also made the list.
While war was less prominent on this year's list than previous ones, other violent episodes included CNN’s coverage of the manhunt for the killer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and Reuters’ coverage of the ousting of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
What was happening on social?
In December 2024, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione made headlines as he was charged in the deadly shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the street in New York City. The most viewed video following the shooting was posted on TikTok by Daily Mail. It featured Mangione’s high school valedictorian speech and was viewed by 20M people in a single day.
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News isn’t always shocking or upsetting. Sometimes, it’s even downright heartwarming. We see this softer side in stories like number 7 on our list from CNN’s Francesca Street: “She arranged a date with a guy she met on a plane. When he didn’t show, she unexpectedly met her future husband.”
With the BBC’s “Twins sold at birth reunited by TikTok video,” we also saw the power of social media to provide connection online and in real life.
What was happening on social?
#GoodNews content on TikTok saw a 12.5% increase in views per video from 2023 to 2024. The most viewed content within the #GoodNews category in 2024 is a YouTube video featuring a shark rescue, earning 14.4 million views in the first month—but 93 million views over the course of a year—indicating that #GoodNews is an ever-green content opportunity for publishers.
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For the second year in a row, scandals were one of the most engaging themes, led by the release of the “Epstein list” in January. Peaking at number 10 with The Independent’s “The Epstein List: Full list of names revealed in unsealed court records so far,” we had 5 stories from 4 different outlets on the topic and audiences spent more than 28 million minutes engaging with them.
Other tales of scandals and true crime included “The crime that shook Singapore,” “The Kidnapping I can’t escape,” and the arrest of the “Ketamine Queen” connected to actor Matthew Perry’s death.
What was happening on social?
The infamous list of attendees at Jeffrey Epstein's private island was released in January of 2024 and spurred a whirlwind of social media activity. Here’s a breakdown of who was creating content about it across social platforms:
Influencers: 83%
Media Properties: 16%
Brands: 1%
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With each passing year we say goodbye to more celebrities, politicians, and artists who left a mark on our collective culture.
Notable figures we paid tribute to this year include actress Shannon Doherty, singer Liam Payne, and fitness icon Richard Simmons.
What was happening on social?
Beloved singer and member of One Direction, Liam Payne, passed away after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina. Viewership about the singer peaked on the 17th & 18th of October, with over 2.8B views on TikTok alone. User-generated content about the event surpassed 38.5k videos, many discussing conspiracy theories related to his cause of death.
204,409,430,379
Total Engaged Minutes
Behind the Numbers
More than 5,000 media companies use Chartbeat's content analytics to measure and understand their audience. Across this global network, we evaluated more than 38 million pieces of content, totaling 204 billion minutes of Engaged Time, which is the total amount of time visitors spent actively reading. The stories featured reflect the variety of coverage we saw this past year.
Most Engaging Stories Archive
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