A new global survey has revealed that Pope Francis has topped the
list of names most mentioned on the internet so far this year, with his
twitter account also receiving a high ranking on a list of most
mentioned words.
“It’s official: Pope Francis is the most talked about person on the
planet,” CNN’s “Belief Blog” co-editor Daniel Burke wrote in a Nov. 12
post.
“More folks have been chatting about the popular new pontiff online this
year than Edward Snowden, Kate Middleton or even Miley Cyrus.”
The statistics, noted by Burke in his post, come from the 14th annual
survey of the Global Language Monitor, which is a company based in Texas
that tracks “top talkers” on the worldwide web.
According to Burke, the Monitor divides its research into the categories
of “top words, top phrases and top names,” and base their research on
the analysis of “English-language blogs, social media and 275,000
electronic and online news media.”
In this year’s survey, the Monitor found that Pope Francis came out as
number one on the list of the most talked about names, followed by
Obamacare, The National Security Agency, Edward Snowden, and Kate
Middleton.
On the list of the most popular words mentioned online, the Monitor
found that the Pope’s twitter handle, @Pontifex, came in fourth, stating
that it was beat out by the words “404” – the code for a broken webpage
– along with “fail” and “hashtag,” which is used to denote different
topics on twitter.
President of the Global Language Monitor Paul Payack revealed that the
words “’404’ and ‘fail’ got a big boost from the problematic launch of
the Obama administration's website for purchasing health care under the
Affordable Care Act,” Burke wrote.
In separate post written on the “Belief Blog” earlier this month, Burke
spoke of the fact that the new pontiff seems to be gaining popularity
even amongst atheists.
In light of the Pope’s “spontaneous acts of compassion,” Burke noted
that Pope Francis has not only “earned high praise from fellow
Catholics,” but that “even atheists love him.”
During a Nov. 7 video interview posted on the blog, Burke expressed his
opinion that the pontiff’s popularity is growing because “we see a lot
of religious leaders who talk about reaching out to the poor and the
marginalized…but we finally see a religious figure who actually putting
his hands on it, who's actually embracing these people physically.”
Burke then quoted several twitter posts from atheists written on the
same day as the interview, including one by a woman who states that “I
may be an atheist, but there's something about Pope Francis that makes
me want to be Catholic. He's so inspiring.”