Breaking news in the hands of few: Newsbrokering on X during the Trump assassination attempts

2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG

This is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. It was crossposted on the CIP’s election rumor research Substack newsletter.

By Mert Can Bayar, Stephen Prochaska, Ashlyn B. Aske, Joseph S. Schafer, Danielle Lee Tomson, and Emma S. Spiro
Center for an Informed Public
University of Washington 

Key Takeaways

• A small number of accounts were highly prominent in the discourse on X/Twitter surrounding both the July and September 2024 assassination attempts on Donald Trump.
• We conceptualize the behaviors of these accounts as newsbrokering — the selective curation and dissemination of information by news influencers during breaking news events.
• Five of the nine most prominent newsbrokering accounts had previously been suspended from X or other platforms. 
• Traditional news outlets, despite having significantly more followers and twice as many tweets, struggled to compete with newsbrokering accounts in terms of audience engagement. 
• In both events, newsbrokering accounts not only curated and disseminated information but also often framed it to fit existing narratives and conspiratorial themes surrounding the assassination attempts. 
• Social media exhibits a trend toward the oligarchization of the news environment, where a few accounts can dominate important discourse. 

Overview 

The digital information environment, which many people rely on to stay informed about breaking news events, has been changing rapidly. Despite falling usage statistics following its ownership change in 2022, X (formerly Twitter) has remained a significant platform for breaking news events. Our previous analysis of the 2023 Israel-Palestine discourse shows that the news environment on X has been dominated by few “newsbroker” accounts, making it more oligarchic, consolidated, and open to manipulation as a news source. These developments call for attention from researchers, journalists, and the broader public to monitor the platform and the emerging actors dominating the information supply in breaking news events.

In this CIP research report, we present an analysis of the discourse surrounding the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. We focus on identifying the most prominent accounts with the highest engagement levels and analyzing the content of their tweets. Similar to our previous findings, these highly engaged accounts are not traditional journalists or news outlets. Instead, our analysis highlights the role of right-wing activists who, in this event, acted as “newsbrokers” — intermediaries who curate and disseminate newsworthy information to their online audiences, particularly in breaking news events. Five of the nine most prominent “newsbroker” accounts were formerly banned on either X or TikTok. 

Our analysis shows that tweets from nine “newsbroker” accounts accumulated 1.2 million retweets within three days (July 13–16). In contrast, the top nine traditional news outlets only gathered 98 thousand retweets — an order of magnitude difference. 

We define newsbrokering as the selective curation and dissemination of information by news influencers during breaking news events. These “newsbroker” accounts act as intermediaries, curating content from news outlets or other sources and sharing it with their audiences. In this analogy, the news market is the marketplace, newsworthy information is the commodity, and attention is the currency. Newsbrokering involves filtering, where the “brokers” determine what qualifies as news or is worthy of amplification. Therefore, accounts engaging in newsbrokering must have large enough followings to function as brokers — they add “value” or currency to information by drawing attention to it.

Newsbrokering is not specific to right-wing activists or fundamentally tied to an ideological or partisan group. In this particular event, we observe that right-wing accounts are sharing news more prominently, as it is an assassination attempt against a right-wing candidate. This leads to increased news-sharing behavior on right-wing accounts and more discussion among right-wing online audiences. Due to the partisan characteristics of the event, we not only see evidence amplification, which is the most crucial role newsbrokers play in the information environment, but also observe these accounts framing and making sense of what happened, as well as giving cues and signals for mobilization. This mobilization can take the form of encouraging harassment of certain accounts online or calling for action in favor of Donald Trump (or against Democrats). We observe that such partisan agendas or strategies of these accounts go hand in hand with the heavily emotional and graphic style of posting that we have seen in newsbrokering before.

A second assassination attempt on Donald Trump on September 15, 2024, added to and sustained the ongoing discourse surrounding these incidents. The strikingly similar patterns of posting and engagement observed in both events demonstrate the prominent position of newsbroker accounts in the information environment on X. Our analysis indicates that seven out of the ten most prominent accounts were newsbrokers, and they received 886,919 retweets across 388 tweets in the three days following the assassination attempt in Florida.

Our analysis underscores the ongoing transformation of the digital information landscape, particularly on X, where a few newsbroker accounts dominate the discourse on crucial political events. Once heralded as a democratizing force for information, social media now exhibits a trend toward the oligarchization of the news environment. Different crises do sometimes lead to different highly engaged accounts, but this process of oligarchization still leads to the entrenchment of a comparatively small set of news influencers. Instead of developing infrastructure to support a variety of news sources and decentralized news platforms, where community-driven initiatives like citizen journalism can thrive, we are seeing a trend where X is becoming a hub for a small group of influential individuals who serve as news curators and amplifiers, often promoting information based on their own agendas.

Methodology: Identifying prominent accounts in the discourse on X surrounding the July assassination attempt against Donald Trump

In the past, social media researchers commonly accessed Twitter/X data through an endpoint that allowed for keyword-based samples of platform tweets to be observed and analyzed at a large scale and in real time. However, since spring 2023, these options are no longer freely available and have become too expensive for many, making it more difficult to conduct large-scale quantitative analyses. We are evolving methods for research and rapid analysis in the absence of these tools.

We have implemented a new data collection process using Brandwatch, a third-party social listening tool, to gather data on X. This tool allows us to estimate the total number of retweets an account receives within a specific period by using a query. The query helps us to filter relevant tweets and exclude irrelevant ones based on specific key terms related to the event (e.g., “Trump,” “Assassination,” “Shooter”). This enables us to collect tweets related to the assassination attempt and filter out unrelated tweets, such as those about the RNC that occurred in the same week.

We rely on the engagement list Brandwatch provides to get the most engaged accounts. Then, to measure the engagement more directly within these accounts, we track the number of retweets these accounts received in the given period. Brandwatch enables us to measure the total number of retweets an account receives. This includes the number of times an account’s tweets are retweeted. 

Nine newsbroker accounts received 1.2 million retweets within three days

Based on our analysis of the tweets collected from Brandwatch, we identified the top ten most-mentioned accounts in the first three days following the July 13 assassination attempt. We decided to exclude @Elonmusk as an outlier because Musk’s account is not solely dedicated to news, and the engagement statistics of his account may be from a different system. The remaining nine most-mentioned accounts are listed in Tables 1 and 2 below.

Self description of the top 9 most-mentioned news accounts of “newsbrokers” (July 13–16, 2024)

Account Handle	Account Name	Self-description
@lauraloomer	Laura Loomer	Investigative Journalist 🇺🇸 Founder of LOOMERED. Host of @LoomerUnleashed Former @Project_Veritas  operative. 📸 America First ✡️ Feisty Jewess 🔥 Receipt Queen
@CollinRugg	Collin Rugg	Co-Owner of Trending Politics | Investor | American 🇺🇸
@dc_draino	DC_Draino	Rogan O’Handley
@libsoftiktok	Libs of TikTok	News you can’t see anywhere else. 📧 submissions@libsoftiktok.com. DM submissions. Bookings: Partnerships@libsoftiktok.com. ⬇️Subscribe to our newsletter
@hodgetwins	Hodgetwins	Merch & Giveaways at: http://officialhodgetwins.com  —— PODCAST:  @thetwinspod
@MattWallace888	Matt Wallace	CEO of #Titter ~ @ElonMusk Council ~ Turn On The Notifications For Real-Time Breaking News Alerts! #FreeSpeech📣 #Dogecoin🐕 #ElonMusk 💼  @DianaWallace888  💍⛪️
@dbongino	Dan Bongino	Public Enemy #1
@bennyjohnson	Benny Johnson	i make internet
@dom_lucre	Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives	JournalisTuber | For Business: domlucrebooking@gmail.com

Table 1: Please note the nine top accounts are ranked based on the total mentions they received, starting with the most mentioned, according to Brandwatch’s most-mentioned list. The account names and descriptions are current as of October 10, 2024.

We see that five of the nine account names or descriptions contain keywords that suggest they are related to news, such as “investigative journalist,” “trending politics,” “breaking news,” “news you can’t see anywhere else,” and “breaker of narratives.” The remaining four accounts do not directly refer to news in their names or descriptions. However, our content analysis suggests that all nine accounts, despite potentially playing different roles on the Internet at different times, acted as newsbrokers in the three days following the assassination attempt on July 13.

Table 2 shows the activity and engagement statistics for the top 9 newsbroker accounts, including the number of tweets during the observation window and the total retweets of the account tweets. The ranking here is based on the list Brandwatch provides. Although their engagement metrics are heavily correlated with the total number of retweets accounts received, it includes mentions encompassing retweets and other metrics_[1]. 

Among nine accounts, the top four are responsible for twice as many retweets as the bottom five. The top four accounts received over 800,000 retweets from 159 tweets, while the remaining five accounts amassed around 400,000 retweets from 186 tweets.

The highly-engaged nine “newsbrokers” and their engagement metrics (July 13–16, 2024)

Rank	Account	Number of Event-Related Tweets	Total Number of Retweets
1	@lauraloomer	67	259,206
2	@CollinRugg	45	220,895
3	@dc_draino	25	211,301
4	@libsoftiktok	22	154,127
5	@hodgetwins	82	109,072
6	@MattWallace888	32	141,624
7	@dbongino	9	20,416
8	@bennyjohnson	39	62,064
9	@dom_lucre	24	55,643

Table 2: Please note that event-related tweets include all event-related tweets from these accounts within three days (July 13-16). The total number of retweets reflects the retweets these accounts’ event-related tweets received.

A note on limitations

The accounts in Tables 1 and 2 are visible and potentially influential in structuring the ongoing conversation. Their tweets are widely retweeted, and their accounts are frequently mentioned in the discussions on the attempted assassination. Throughout this report, we use the terms “newsbrokers” or “newsbroker accounts” interchangeably to refer to accounts that engaged in newsbrokering during this event, though they may serve different roles at other times and do not always function as newsbrokers.

Our approach comes with several important caveats:

• Collecting retweets with a specified query (e.g., a set of critical terms) might not result in a comprehensive set of relevant tweets, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to know what might be missing. 
• The data used here may be restricted and/or limited in a way that is not visible to us as researchers, as we depend on Brandwatch to broker data from X, which is also imperfect.
• We focus on the first three days of the events, from July 13 to July 16 and from September 15 to September 18. Tweets about the event outside this range may be missed.

Despite these caveats, we believe the current approach is robust and that the accounts in Tables 1 and 2 represent highly salient, prominent accounts on this topic.

A note on terminology

Following a common practice in academic scholarship, we refer to the different elements of X (tweets, retweets, likes, follows) by the terms used in the community itself. Likewise, we use terms like “news twitter” and “crisis twitter,” both lower case, as the common names used on X to refer to these communities or discourse subgroups. When referring to the platform itself or associated policies, we use the term “X,” the legal name of the platform.

Newsbrokers Outperforms Traditional News Outlets 

Previous research shows that breaking news events can create “new elites”_[2] or upend media hierarchies, a phenomenon previously observed on Twitter/X. We are interested in analyzing the sources of information consumed on the platform, as well as the type of information. We want to see whether this event created new elites or amplified existing ones. What we observe is the latter. Most of the top nine accounts have existed for years on the platform, with a history of previous suspensions and bans. 

We are also interested in comparing the engagement levels of these accounts with those of traditional news outlets that many X users follow. For this purpose, we utilized Brandwatch’s engagement metrics and gathered the nine most-mentioned highly engaged traditional news outlets (in order, @foxnews, @nypost, @cnn, @msnbc, @cbsnews, @newsmax, @ap, @nytimes, and @abc).

What is noteworthy is that the accounts that received the highest engagement when sharing news are not these traditional news outlets but rather right-wing activist accounts that engage in newsbrokering. Although the list of news outlets includes Fox News (retweets just over 30k) and the New York Post (retweets just over 22k) which are well-known right-wing outlets, their engagement is still not comparable to newsbroker accounts.

Table 3: Aggregate Engagement metrics for “newsbrokers” and  traditional news outlets (July 13–16, 2024)

Account Type	Number of Event-Related Tweets (Total)	Total Number of Retweets (Total)
Newsbrokers	346	1,238,017
News Outlets	744	98,064

Table 3: Please note that the nine newsbroker accounts are responsible for 346 tweets with 1,238,017 retweets. Nine news outlet accounts are responsible for 744 tweets that got 98,064 retweets over the three days following the assassination attempt on July 13, 2024.

Table 3 presents the engagement metrics for the top nine newsbroker and news outlet accounts. Notably, despite the news outlets tweeting twice as much as the newsbrokers, the level of engagement received by the newsbrokers is significantly higher. Specifically, 346 tweets from nine newsbrokers garnered over 1.2 million retweets, whereas nine news outlets’ 744 tweets received close to 100,000 retweets.

The results become even more noteworthy when we examine traditional news outlets and newsbrokers’ number of followers. According to Table 4, traditional news outlets significantly outnumber newsbrokers regarding followers. These findings align with our previous research, showing that newsbroker accounts with fewer than 1 million followers_[3] had higher engagement than traditional news outlets with over 25 million followers. Although it’s commonly believed that a higher number of followers correlates with greater engagement, the breaking news events we observe challenge this assumption. In fact, the three most frequently mentioned accounts have the fewest followers out of the 18 accounts.

The “newsbrokers” and traditional news outlets by number of followers (as of August 9, 2024)

Account Handle	Account Name	Number of Followers
@cnn	CNN	62,701,366
@nytimes	The New York Times	55,298,294
@foxnews	Fox News	24,693,576
@abc	ABC News	17,850,659
@ap	The Associated Press	15,982,074
@cbsnews	CBS News	8,980,023
@dbongino	Dan Bongino	5,714,775
@msnbc	MSNBC	5,116,590
@libsoftiktok	Libs of TikTok	3,352,984

 

@nypost	New York Post	3,175,594
@hodgetwins	Hodgetwins	2,870,360
@newsmax	NEWSMAX	2,838,740
@bennyjohnson	Benny Johnson	2,637,970
@MattWallace888	Matt Wallace	1,974,517
@dc_draino	DC_Draino	1,698,597
@dom_lucre	Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives	1,433,150
@CollinRugg	Collin Rugg	1,396,453
@lauraloomer	Laura Loomer	1,214,317

Table 4: The number of followers in this table indicates the current number of followers as of August 9, 2024.

To better understand the difference in engagement and visibility between newsbrokers and news outlets, we analyzed the timeline of their tweets and the number of retweets their tweets received. Figure 1 illustrates the significant difference in retweets between newsbrokers and traditional news outlet accounts on X. Tweets by newsbrokers are represented in blue bubbles, and tweets by news outlets are presented in dark yellow. The size of the bubbles reflects the number of retweets they received.

As shown in Figure 1, newsbrokers’ tweets (blue) exhibit a wide range of engagement, with some receiving thousands of retweets and others receiving only hundreds. In contrast, news outlets (dark yellow) demonstrate less variability, yet none of their tweets receive a large number of retweets. 

Initially, accounts focused on making sense of the assassination attempt as information and evidence emerged and spread online. The first viral tweets in the bottom left of the graph are from this period (e.g., the most retweeted tweet in the dataset), where newsbrokers focused on disseminating the news of the attempt and often framed it in ways that fit their narratives. Over time, some newsbrokers, including @libsoftiktok, continued to tweet and were more active in mobilizing audiences than other accounts we analyzed. This demonstrates various phases in newsbrokering behavior, which we will discuss in more detail below.

A Deeper Dive: Exploring Newsbrokering Behavior 

In addition to our quantitative analysis. We take a deeper dive into newsbrokering behavior, analyzing their rhetoric, styles, and actions. We found that, while each account may occupy its own unique niche or personality, they deployed some common tropes, aesthetic cues, and actions at different stages of a breaking news event. We outline them below.

Rhetoric and Aesthetics of Newsbrokering 

While the accounts we studied had diverse posting styles and personas, they shared some common tropes and aesthetic cues when newsbrokering. Firstly, they were united by a common strategy of positioning their content as a “better” alternative to traditional news outlets. They frequently expressed strong criticism and distrust towards traditional media. In previous academic research, this behavior of fostering distrust in traditional media has been observed in news influencers of various political backgrounds. By discrediting the traditional media, these accounts use the trust gap in the news market, which they then attempt to fill. Unlike traditional news outlets, these accounts actively engage with their audiences through replies and retweets, making audience participation in breaking news events more interactive. Through this approach, they aim to build trust and appear authentic by connecting with their audience on a personal level and acknowledging shared concerns.

Beyond the criticism of traditional media, we noted several other common posting practices which were generally associated with accounts that newsbrokered in this event. Many tweets cultivated a sense of urgency and newsworthiness through words like “BREAKING,” “NEW,” and “JUST IN.” The police car light emoji (🚨) was also frequently used this way. Some tweets further emphasized urgency and importance by tweeting in all capital letters. 

The majority of tweets we viewed contained some form of media — usually photos or videos, a pattern we saw in newsbrokering before. As intermediaries, the people running the newsbrokering accounts did not appear to be producing this media content on the ground but rather sourcing it from elsewhere on the internet or from traditional news outlets. This media content was generally provided without context or attribution – a practice common in newsbrokering behavior, which may be in response to the changing landscape of Elon Musk’s X. 

Much of the newsbrokers’ content was emotionally charged. The posters often expressed their emotional reactions to the unfolding incident in real-time, including shock and fear for Trump, anger at the shooter and other parties perceived to have encouraged the attempt or failed to prevent it, and sadness for the victims and their families. 

Three Stages of Newsbrokering: Evidence amplification, framing, and mobilization

We observed newsbrokering behaviors that could be sorted into three stages as online audiences and brokers themselves collectively made sense of the assassination attempt: 

• 1) Initial evidence production and amplification focused on determining what is happening, 
• 2) Framing and interpretation of evidence to understand what it means and,
• 3) The creation of avenues of mobilization for audiences as they determine what to do. 

While newsbrokering is most directly related to category (1), few accounts we analyzed here tweeted evidence without also framing or interpreting that evidence in this event. This stress on framing is likely due to the partisan nature of this event, as the accounts in question belong to right-wing activists who are amplifying and making sense of evidence related to an assassination attempt against a presidential candidate. Drawing on our content analysis of the top nine accounts tweets in the three days we examined, we describe these behaviors and their implications in more detail below.

What’s Happening: Evidence Amplification

The first category of behaviors we observed is most central to newsbrokering. It is most similar to how news is engaged in by traditional news outlets — amplifying information — or evidence — in an attempt to make sense of what’s happening. Most tweets we viewed included some form of media, often photos or videos seemingly from the Butler, Pennsylvania rally itself, but sometimes clips from broadcast reporting or articles about the assassination attempt_[4]. As we’ve observed in other breaking news events, this evidence was generally shared often without attribution, and content was often shared in a fast-paced, disorienting manner_[5].

The most overt function of newsbrokering in this stage is the selection of which evidence to amplify; thus, it’s particularly salient to consider (1) what the influential accounts choose to tweet about and (2) how they frame the information they present. Posters in our dataset shared information about the event in general, including footage from the rally, the shooter and his motives, the Secret Service’s failures to secure the rally area, and cast blame on figures like President Biden and traditional media.

Newsbrokers rarely amplified evidence without framing it in an ideological manner that fits their existing narratives, such as the deep state against Donald Trump. They consistently focused on the system failures that allowed the attempt to transpire. They often amplified and analyzed video footage of the shooter spotted on the roof (e.g., Image 1), as well as of the Secret Service counter-snipers and of the agents shielding Trump. This presentation of evidence was used to support criticisms of the Secret Service and to endorse narratives like the idea of an “inside job” surrounding the assassination attempt. They referred to the victims as “fallen heroes” using emotionally charged language.

Some tweets also featured evidence in the form of ‘expert testimony,’ where posters claimed to have been in contact with a wide range of ‘professionals’ that made judgments about the event based on their alleged expertise. For instance, visible in Image 2, @DC_Draino shared criticisms of the Secret Service response allegedly from a trained sniper, and @dom_lucre shared a claim from an actress who alleged the attempt was staged using props.

Interestingly, while the media included in tweets tended to act as evidence of a claim, in some tweets, the media took on multiple roles, also acting as a signal to the poster’s audience. Since many tweets presented information with minimal or no context, the media served as a way for an in-the-know audience to clarify ambiguous wording in the claim. For instance, in Image 3, the photo identifies “he” as the shooter (whose identity had been confirmed and reported by traditional media featuring similar photos):

Through this selective focus on certain aspects of the assassination attempt, newsbrokering allows influencers to garner support for their particular version of the day’s events. Even without overt framing, the amplified evidence is not selected neutrally, and instead reinforces a particular narrative about what’s happening (e.g., Image 6). 

What it Means: Framing and Interpreting

The second category of behaviors we observed involves the overt interpretation and framing of pieces of evidence, as well as the event overall. This process can be summarized as a part of collective sensemaking where audiences and brokers collaborate to understand what the emerging events and evidence discussed above mean. 

The degree of framing by newsbrokers fell along a continuum where some tweets had little or no framing while others had more overt framing included to various degrees. As brokers amplified pieces of evidence, they made sense of it themselves, often providing frames that members of the audience used to interpret the evidence being discussed. In this way, brokers appeared to play a major role in the collective sensemaking process that emerges from novel events. They don’t neutrally broker news. Instead, they act in concert with members of the audience to interpret evidence, providing frames that members of the audience use to interpret the evidence and event in question.

Most of the content we analyzed amplified and framed evidence in the same tweet. For instance, Laura Loomer’s tweet above (Image 4) presents evidence as well as frames the attempt as an “inside job,” which was one of the popular conspiratorial tropes we found in our previous report on the first assassination attempt. Additionally, several newsbrokers also engaged with audience members by replying to tweet threads. In doing so, they engaged more directly in the collective sensemaking process and provided further details on their interpretation of the evidence in question. For example, in the tweet below (Image 5), Collin Rugg embeds a video of an interview with U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. In the tweet, Rugg summarizes some of the interviews and includes his initial interpretation of the interview, calling Cheatle’s stance “Utter insanity.” In subsequent replies to members of the online audience, Rugg provided further commentary, framing the video within the context of audience members’ comments. For example, in response to an audience member saying that Cheatle should be fired if she doesn’t step down, Rugg responds, “The Biden admin thinks she is doing a good job lol.”

What to Do: Signals for Mobilization

The third and final category of behaviors that the accounts we examined demonstrated is the creation of avenues for audience participation. Colloquially, this can be thought of as answering the question “What do we do?” once preliminary meaning has been converged on through initial sensemaking. Notably, the framing actions described above are often ideologically aligned and, as such, set the stage for subsequent action. Regarding encouraging action, most newsbrokers consistently engage with audience members, implicitly creating engagement pathways by responding to audience questions and reactions. Their availability and consistent engagement may encourage members of the audience to interact with their tweets more directly. 

This call to action is often embedded and implied within the tweet, particularly through its framing. For instance, Dom Lucre (Image 6)  reports on the incident using a picture that shows blood in Trump’s ear, framing the event as a declaration of “war.” While the specific call to action is not explicitly stated, it is implied and left to the audience, shaped by the “war” framing. 

More directly, some newsbrokers explicitly created content to direct online audiences toward a particular action. Our dataset’s most dramatic example of this behavior was @libsoftiktok, whose tweets and Twitter bio served to direct audiences in calls to action. In their bio, @libsoftiktok solicits “submissions” from their audience related to salient events, focusing on finding videos or screenshots of “leftists” saying or doing something considered taboo. In our case study, this mainly involved amplifying tweets of people who reacted by saying something like “too bad [the bullet] missed” or suggesting that the assassination attempt was staged. @libsoftiktok included personal information alongside the allegedly incriminating evidence, including people’s names and places of employment, which audiences used to harass the people in question. This often resulted in the loss of their employment, deletion of social media accounts, and, in some cases, fear for their safety and the safety of their friends and family. We choose not to include examples of these tweets because they contain the personal information of individuals targeted for harassment.

Formerly Banned Accounts Dominated  

Notable in this set of accounts is the prominence of accounts previously suspended from X/Twitter. Five accounts (@lauraloomer, @dc_draino, @libsfftiktok, @dbongino, @dom_lucre) were previously (temporarily or permanently) suspended on X. @LibsOfTikTok was also suspended on TikTok and briefly suspended on Facebook and Instagram, and @dbongino was permanently banned from YouTube. Even focusing on just these five who have been previously suspended from Twitter, these five received over seven times as many retweets mentioning these accounts as all nine of the traditional news outlets (707,114 mentioning retweets compared to 98,064). Indeed, three of these previously suspended users — @lauraloomer, @dc_draino, and @LibsOfTikTok — each individually had more retweets than all nine traditional news outlets combined. 

Discourse Around the September 15 Assassination Attempt Compared 

On September 15, a second assassin tried to kill Donald Trump. Similar newsbrokering behavior was observed around this attempt, with multiple top accounts that engaged in newsbrokering in July again being at the top of the list in September. Overall, the volume of discussion decreased somewhat between the attempts. This could be for a few potential reasons. These include the fact that 1) the would-be assassin did not come nearly as close to successfully killing the former president, 2) the attempt occurred in a much less public setting without a large rally crowd that could generate evidence, and  3) the relative lack of accompanying compelling visual evidence of either the attempt or Trump’s post-attempt behavior. Despite these factors indicating a decrease in volume, we still saw a relatively high number of tweets and engagement by the newsbrokers. The number of tweets they posted and the engagement rates they received are similar. However, some of this engagement included continued discussion of the past assassination attempt rather than solely the second one in September.

The highly engaged seven “newsbrokers” and their engagement metrics (September 15–18, 2024)

Rank	Account	Number of Event-Related Tweets	Total Number of Retweets
1	@bennyjohnson	80	221,869
2	@LauraLoomer	72	164,487
3	@nicksortor	35	124,993
4	@libsoftiktok	47	105,274
5	@RealAlexJones	46	104,883
6	@JackPosobiec	86	89,616
7	@charliekirk11	22	75,797

Table 5: Please note that event-related tweets include all event-related tweets from these accounts within three days (September 15-18). The total number of retweets reflects the retweets these accounts’ event-related tweets received. 

Conclusion 

We studied the impact of accounts engaging in newsbrokering – spreading breaking news distinct from traditional news outlets — within the X information ecosystem in the immediate aftermath of the two Trump assassination attempts. We compared their reach to traditional news outlets, finding that news influencers engaging in this behavior had much higher engagement than more traditional news. We found that these accounts engaged in three primary behaviors of newsbrokering: 1) amplifying evidence, 2) interpreting and framing it for their audiences, and 3) mobilizing their audiences to action. We anticipate similar dynamics of newsbrokers significantly influencing conversations on X to continue as the election news cycle progresses.

Our analysis reveals that X, when used as a platform for getting news, has a fairly concentrated group of influencer accounts dominating the breaking news discourse over key national and international events. This oligarchization, or dominance of a few actors in attention and engagement, threatens the diversity of our information sources. It can further amplify divisive narratives, entrench existing ideological gridlocks, and significantly increase the flow of unverified information online. While it is important to acknowledge that these top influencers are not the same across all breaking news events, many of these accounts are repeatedly prominent in a variety of time periods. This process of oligarchization, even when the particular top accounts shift, is an important dynamic to further explore. 

The growing presence of this oligarchization in controlling information flow underscores the need for greater transparency in how algorithms determine the content we see, particularly on the “For You” page, in breaking news events in the public interest. Platforms like X should clarify the procedures that lead content to appear on users’ timelines. Additionally, a transparent system could highlight highly engaged accounts that surpass a certain follower threshold, categorizing them as public accounts. For these key accounts, especially during major events, users need to know more about who provides the most engaged information, enhancing accountability in the digital news environment.

The implications of this oligarchization are far-reaching. As the flow of information on social media becomes increasingly dominated by a small number of actors, there is a risk that social media will further entrench existing power structures, amplify partisan narratives, and deepen ideological divides. This calls for renewed attention to how these platforms function as news hubs and highlight the need for systemic solutions that address the concentration of power in digital news dissemination. Ultimately, the challenge lies in realizing the democratizing potential of social media and combining it with the need for accountability and transparency in the ever-evolving information environment.

---

Acknowledgments

We thank our former colleague Mike Caulfield for his contributions to conceptualizing the term “newsbroker.” 

---

Footnotes

• [1] Two accounts that got high mentions with relatively lower retweet numbers are @dbongino and @hodgetwins. This is particularly because their account handle is mentioned more than others in the list. 
• [2] Previously, we described “new elites” as a small group of users who are responsible for a significant amount of the content engaged in the Twitter discourse surrounding a breaking news event. In this context, “elites” does not refer to the quality or nature of their content, but rather to their position as a “small group of persons who exercise disproportionate power and influence” over what audiences on X read and watch.
• [3] In our previous report, the only newsbroker account (out of seven) with over 1 million followers was the Spectator Index, which had 2.5 million followers.
• [4] The focus on first-person documentation of the event itself may have been partly due to the many spectators at the rally. Newsbrokering around a breaking news event that unfolds out of public view might not feature this as prevalently. 
• [5] The issue of attribution, or lack thereof, is not just a matter of style but also of platform affordances. We have noticed news outlets including an external link in a reply to their tweet, as a way to bypass the new algorithm on platform X, which reduces engagement for tweets containing external links.

---

 

• Mert Can Bayar is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.
• Stephen Prochaska is a CIP graduate research assistant and UW Information School doctoral candidate.  
• Ashlyn B. Aske is a CIP graduate research assistant and Master of Jurisprudence student at the UW School of Law.
• Joseph S. Schafer is a CIP graduate research assistant and doctoral student in the UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering.
• Danielle Lee Tomson is the CIP’s research manager.
• CIP director and co-founder Emma S. Spiro is an Information School associate professor.