The Ukraine war replaced the Covid-19 pandemic to become the most read-about story in 2022, The Economist magazine has reported.
The report cited a study conducted by Chartbeat, a data analytics company, which examined readership figures for 6.5 million stories on 32 different news topics over the past year.
It found that an astonishing 278 million out of a total of 1 billion (i.e. more than a quarter) reading hours were spent on the news of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine.
The study also noted that people spent 6.4 million hours reading about the Ukraine war on 24 February, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and that this figure was greater even than the number of hours spent reading about the Queen's death on the day of her passing (8 September).
In addition, the study found that the war's current daily reading average of 550,000 hours exceeds the Qatar World Cup's daily readership over the course of this winter's tournament.
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The report also found that current US President Joe Biden amassed a total of 137 million reading hours this year, while former US President Donald Trump was not far behind (100 million total reading hours).
The Covid-19 pandemic had been by far the most read about story in 2020 and 2021; indeed, at 800,000 daily reading hours, it also began as this year's most popular story. However, Covid readership has declined significantly since then, despite the continued danger posed by the virus.
