The top three trends Australians are talking about on Twitter are social justice, gaming and finance, according to 2022 Twitter Trends report which analysed billions of tweets from 2019 to 2021.
Angus Keene, managing director of Twitter Australia, said: “People are coming to the platform to join conversations that they care about and it's really a window into culture, but it's also a driver of culture.
“We extensively explored thousands of queries against those billions of tweets, then we looked at year-on-year increases around the key topics.
"We brought in experts - insiders who are cultural experts - and then we overlaid the data with some context and some more qualitative insights.”
The three trends explored in detail:
Voices Powering Change
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39% YoY increase in conversations around First Nations
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52% YoY increase in conversations around equality
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58% YoY increase of LGBTQIA+ conversations and content
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81% YoY growth in conversations about woman’s rights
The report said that conversations around identity are becoming more and more nuanced, with Australians looking to understand about how intersections of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and other facets of identity, impact people’s experiences and perspectives.
“We also saw movements like March 4 Justice that began on Twitter, so the conversation and the community actually started on the platform. That then turned into real-world movements like huge rallies around the country,” said Keene.
Next-Level Gaming
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20% YoY increase in esports and livestreaming conversations
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128% YoY rise in conversations around MMORPGs
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286% YoY growth in conversations around metaverse platforms
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1,560% YoY surge in conversations about play-to-earn crypto gaming
The report said that the possibilities of decentralised games —games that are built or operate on blockchain technology, allowing players to earn and use digital assets — will be a growing topic of conversation among content creators and others in the gaming industry.
“If you look back in the past around gaming, gaming started with single player games, then moved to multiplayer, then online, and now the metaverse. What we're seeing in these emerging topics over the last 12 months is [gaming] moving into decentralised, blockchain-based games,” said Keene.
Speaking of Money
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76% YoY increase in finance conversations among everyday Australians (not financial professionals or investors)
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108% YoY increase in conversations around Blockchain
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113% YoY increase in conversations around artist- entrepreneurs (talking about art as an investment asset class)
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333% YoY surge in mentions of crypto
The report said that conversations about finance are meshing with creativity, with NFT-related tweets among artists on the rise. This new technology is allowing artists to sell their creations — from 3D animations to music — in the form of NFTs.
“People are educating themselves broadly around decentralised finance (de-fi), different crypto types, and then obviously exchanges, which is where people are trading. The de-fi community is becoming more educated and more sophisticated, and they just have this thirst for knowledge on Twitter,” said Keene.
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