Wikipedia has released its 2024 Year in Review revealing the top theme of last year’s most popular English language articles was politics in the United States and India - both of which held major elections.
Data from the Wikimedia Foundation showed that political pages from the two countries took up 10 of the top 25 articles and made up nearly half of English Wikipedia’s total pageviews in 2024.
The U.S. federal election was held in November 2024 and took out the number 2 spot for most viewed page with more than 31 million views. (The number 1 spot went to: Deaths in 2024)
Views surged on pages that covered the election on and around 5 November, with 4.2 million views on the 2024 presidential election article on election day alone.
Of the presidential candidates running in the election 3 of the 4 appeared in the top list.
Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris took the number 3 spot with 29.5 million views, followed closely by President Donald Trump with 27.5 million.
The Wikipedia page about Vice President JD Vance was in 7th place with 24 million pageviews.
Vice president candidate Tim Walz did not make the top list.
Additionally, India held its general election from April to June 2024 and the related Wikipedia article was the 12th most viewed over all with 18.5 million pageviews.
Views peaked at 1.2 million on June 4th, the day it was announced that Narendra Modi was re-elected as India’s prime minister for a third term.
The article about the election was edited over 6000 times by nearly 900 individual volunteers.
“Wikipedia is a reflection of the world and the people who live in it,” said the Wikimedia Foundation page - a sentiment that is evident within the data given the social and political climate of 2024.
Other major topics included in the top list were pop culture icons such as Taylor Swift and significant world sporting events such as the 2024 Summer Olympics and the 2024 European Football Championship (UEFA).
Users also spent up to 2.9 billion hours reading English-language articles and 5.8 billion hours in other languages.
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