Facebook’s Year In Review Is Heavy On Heavy News

Year in review season is here and Facebook’s entry is big on major news.

The social network parsed all the posts from its 1.5 billion active users and pulled together a list of the topics that sparked the most discussion in 2015. Hard news crowded out everything else; US politics, terror attacks, an earthquake in Nepal, the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, the Greek debt crisis, protests in Baltimore and a mass shooting in Charleston are all represented.

The US presidential election topped the list, a somewhat surprising fact given the global scope of the survey of Facebook posts from Jan. 1 to Dec. 1. But then with Donald Trump in the mix, there’s bound to be heat and the business mogul-turned reality star-turned polarizing candidate brought in Facebook crowds even with seemingly uninspiring posts like this one:

Not surprisingly, the Paris attacks also were highly discussed, marking the outpouring of support for the people in a country dealing with the worst terrorist attack in western Europe in more than 10 years.

Of course, there was plenty of less weighty conversation on Facebook this year, but Facebook chose to put the focus on hard news topics, perhaps as a counterpoint to the fact that on Twitter four of the top five most retweeted tweets of 2015 were related to One Direction.

Facebook apparently is attracting an older crowd because the boy band didn’t even make the list of most discussed entertainers. The top three: Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Kayne West.

HBO’s Game of Thrones was the most discussed TV show and despite the fact that it has yet to be released, Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the top movie.

Facebook created a WordPress microsite at yearinreview.fb.com to give people the ability to explore the year on Facebook in detail.

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