TORONTO – Worldwide tributes to those killed in the deadly attack on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo Wednesday have made Twitter history.
With over 3.4 million tweets over two days, the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie is now one of the most popular hashtag in Twitter history, according to the social media site.
#JeSuisCharlie (I am Charlie) began to trend worldwide shortly after Wednesday’s attack, which left 12 people dead and 11 others injured. The hashtag has been trending both worldwide and in Canada since.
According to Twitter Data, by 7:15 p.m. Paris time on the night of the shooting, there had been 2.1 million tweets sent using the hashtag. At one point in the evening the hashtag garnered 6,486 tweets per minute, according to Twitter France.
By Thursday, over 3.4 million tweets had been published worldwide, according to Twitter France.
The hashtag has already been painted on the walls at Twitter’s California headquarters. The social media company has marked many prominent events with hashtags on its walls, including #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter to mark the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
By comparison, according to Twitter, more than 2.3 million tweets were sent out last year about protests in Hong Kong, known as the #UmbrellaRevolution.
Last November, a grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown fatal shooting. In the hours that followed the decision, 3.5 million tweets were sent out from across the United States.
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