On any given day, the headline of a newspaper highlights the news that is shaping the world. However, anyone who wants to get a pulse on what’s important to the general public doesn’t need to pick up a paper. All they need to do is open Twitter and look at the trending hashtags.

In fact, taking a look back at the trending hashtags for the year may be even more informative about trends in the general public than news stories and public surveys. Interestingly, a recent study decided to explore this possibility by tracing an entire year’s worth of daily trending Twitter hashtags.

Overall, the most tweeted hashtag of 2020 was #BlackLivesMatter, the phrase that captured a social movement against anti-Black violence and police brutality. Interestingly, there’s already been lots of conversation about how the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has helped and hurt movements for racial justice. Questions around slacktivism, Twitter fights, and posting about traumatic events with the hashtag have been debated by ordinary citizens and political scientists alike.

Interestingly, the next most popular hashtags of the year were entirely focused not on civil rights, or even on the news-dominating COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the hashtags #Oscars, #GRAMMYS, and #ArtistOfTheSummer were the next three most popular hashtags of 2020. In any other year, seeing trending hashtags about popular culture wouldn’t come as much of a surprise. But in 2020, ceremonies like the Oscars and the Grammy’s weren’t even held in person, and therefore, lost much of their usual fashion-focused or celebrity gossip buzz. Still, perhaps the popularity of hashtags around these awards might indicate how Americans distracted themselves with popular culture through an intensely stressful year.

Finally, the study revealed how rapidly trends change in American popular cultures. For instance, in a single week in September, popular hashtags ranged from #Emmys to #BreonnaTaylor to #SECFootball in the range of a few days. If nothing else, the rise and fall of trends represent that even in 2020, where many people felt days blend together in boredom, there was still plenty of flash-in-the-pan news to be discussed online.

Altogether, looking back at 2020’s hashtags is an informative and fresh way to look back on the historic year. Who knows what hashtags will reveal about 2021?