Tweets about the World Cup, US riots and the Ukraine crisis preoccupied UK Twitter users in 2014.
Germany’s 7-1 semi-final defeat of hosts Brazil was the most tweeted event, and 1D singer Harry Styles’s tweet celebrating the band’s fourth anniversary was the most retweeted.
Here are the top nine hashtags used on Twitter in 2014:
• #WorldCup – 21.6 million
• #Ferguson – 16.8 million
• #Ukraine – 9.1 million
• #ISIS – 4.9 million
• #Icebucketchallege – 4.6 million
• #MH17 – 4.5 million
• #BringBackOurGirls – 4.5 million
• #Ebola – 4 million
• #Sochi – 1.2 million
Globally, the Brazil World Cup in June and July broke records to become the most tweeted about subject in 2014.
Twitter has dubbed 2014 the year of the selfie, with worldwide statistics showing users had mentioned the word 92 million times, an increase of 500% on 2013.
Ellen DeGeneres’ star-filled Oscar photo taken on a mobile phonewas retweeted more than three million times – a Twitter record.
Lewis Wiltshire, director of media partnerships at Twitter UK also highlighted the selfie of Prince William and Prince Harry with internet entrepreneur Jamal Edwards at a Buckingham Palace event.
In terms of news, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March was the most talked event by UK users in 2014.
It was followed by the Scottish independence vote; the inquest of Mark Duggan, who was shot by police in Tottenham, north London in 2011.
In global terms, singer Katy Perry is the most-followed person on Twitter (61 million), ahead of Justin Bieber (57 million) and Barack Obama (51 million).