This week Twitter released data on the biggest trends and tweets seen on Australian feeds this year. And while sport, politics and TV shows drove much of the conversation and made up the biggest hashtags, it was once again web celebrities and bands with huge teenage followings that racked up the bulk of the retweets.

"The main thing about 5 Seconds of Summer is they're really authentic, they're really honest, there's no manager managing their account … and that's true for most celebrities on Twitter", the company's head of music and entertainment Jennie Sager told Fairfax, adding that music is a notable fixture in the Australian Twitter landscape.

"The conversation that music drives [in Australia], especially Australian music artists is disproportionate with the rest of the world", she said.

"Australian music artists may have a much smaller pool of verified music artists compared to the UK and the US, but we drive about 3 times as many impressions".

In fact the top five most followed Australians on Twitter are all musicians, including three 5SOS members (one of whom has more than 8 million followers) plus Cody Simpson and Iggy Azalea.

But the most popular tweet made by an Australian in 2016 came from someone not even close to cracking the list.

"Tell me again how rape and sexual assault accusations will ruin a man's career", tweeted documentary-maker Amelia Paxman at the height of the US election, in a missive that went viral (in the actual sense of the word) and earned her thousands of messages of agreement and abuse. The tweet has been shared almost 130,000 times.

"Everybody who read that tweet knew exactly who she as talking about, even though she didn't mention Donald Trump by name, and it was something that people were feeling all over the world" Sager said, by way of explaining how the tweet reached such lofty heights.

"She only had about 300 followers at the time... but I think it just shows you don't need to be a celebrity to do something that takes off".

Top tweets of 2016

Twitter provided us with a list of the top 10 most popular tweets sent by Australians in 2016 (ranked by number of retweets), but with the caveat that tweets from 5SOS members would be limited. While there is a certain zeitgeistiness that ties them all together, it's safe to say that — purely going off this list — there's no real way to tell which tweets are going to explode. From the top (and with a strong language warning), they are:

Top trends

Of course it wasn't all Trump, tangents and teen idols in 2016, with many of the biggest issues dominating our feeds not with singular, uber-popular tweets but with long-running hashtags and regular discussion.

The biggest hashtag in Australia this year was #auspol, the ubiquitous conversation that is always raging and pretty much sitting somewhere in the middle of the trends list at all times. Second was the similar #ausvotes, followed by #Rio2016 (yep, that happened this year) in third place.

Rounding out the top ten in Australia's most tweeted-about events were the regular ABC panel show #QandA, controversies from both the UK and US with #Brexit and #ElectionNight, some local music love with #ARIAs, monster hunting madness with #PokemonGo and finally for whatever reason #AustraliaDay and #AusOpen.

Elsewhere tags related to appointment TV like #4Corners, #TheProjectTV, #TheBachelorAU and #MKR also rated highly, as did several hashtags related to the plight of those seeking asylum on our shores — #letthemstay, #bringthemhere and #closethecamps — and those seeking equal marriage rights for all — #loveislove, #marriageequality, #LoveWins.

Surprisingly, many of the top political and movement-related hashtags used by Australians this year were not related to Australian issues at all, with tags like #ImWithHer, #PrayforNice and #blacklivesmatter also registering.

"When an issue resonates it doesn't matter where you live. You don't have to be living in Orlando to care about Orlando", Sager said, referencing #PrayforOrlando, which rose in the wake of a deadly US attack.

"It's a real sense of a global community. We see it for example when celebrities pass away. We saw David Bowie this year, Prince, the RIP hashtag this year with any celebrity was just massive. It's the same kind of thing, where people are just looking for friends online essentially, and that global community to express themselves with".