Why Katie Ledecky and 2 Other Olympics MVPs Rule Social Media Right Now

Sports

This week’s most emotionally reacted-to personalities on TV — special Olympics edition!

Katie Ledecky

Simone Biles, Michael Phelps and Aly Raisman continue to get fans all emotional on social media, but three other Olympic athletes are hot on their tails.

The Wrap has partnered with Canvs, a language analytics company that measures emotions around content, for a weekly look at the stars who have TV viewers the most worked up. In this special Olympics edition, the data below covers August 5-16 — from the Opening Ceremony through Tuesday night.

In our last installment, we took a look at the first five days of the Olympics, with an eye toward the athletes dominating the social media conversation. Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles), Aly Raisman (@Aly_Raisman) and Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps), in that order, comprised our top three, based on Olympics TV viewers who made a point of using their official Twitter handles in tweets that contained a specific Emotional Reaction (ER), per Canvs. Simon Biles’ Twitter handle, for instance, was mentioned in 2.5 percent of ERs.

Now we’re looking at a longer period, and total ER volume has jumped, from 2,945,132 (out of 10,872,822 Olympics-related tweets captured by Canvs’ partner Nielsen) over the first five days of the Rio Games, to 6,726,093 (out of 25,412,773) over the first 12 days. And Simone Biles still rules, with her Twitter handle mentioned in 3.9 percent of ERs. But Michael Phelps (2.7 percent) now edges out Aly Raisman (2.5 percent).

Since those three have already gotten plenty of attention, we took a look at the athletes who make the next tier:

Laurie Hernandez, whose Twitter handle (@lzhernandez02) was name-checked in 1.5 percent of ERs.

Simone Manuel, whose Twitter handle (@simone_manuel) was mentioned in 1.5 percent of ERs:

And Katie Ledecky, whose Twitter handle (@katieledecky) was mentioned in 1 percent of ERs — and who shares the cover of the new issue of Sports Illustrated with none other than Simone Biles and Michael Phelps.

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