Leonardo DiCaprio’s Academy Award win takes the prize for the most tweeted Oscar moment ever
Leonardo DiCaprio fought off stiff competition from Eddie Redmane, Michael Fassbender and Matt Damon to take home the Best Actor gong at the Academy Awards last night (28 February).
The Revenant star’s long-awaited win followed 23 years and six nominations worth of Oscar speculation, and a host of tongue-in-cheek memes.
On top of his statuette, the A-lister also scooped another prize, stealing the crown for the most tweeted about Oscar moment ever. Beating 2014 host Ellen DeGeneres' star-studded selfie, DiCaprio’s moment in the sun clocked up 440,000 tweets per minute when he took to the stage to accept his trophy according to Twitter; by comparison, Degeneres’ tweet caused 255,000 tweets per minute.
Figures from social measuring company BrandWatch also pinpointed the actor’s win as the most buzzed about topic of the night
The star received backing from some big names on the platform, who praised him for tackling the issue of climate change in his speech.
Finally!!! Our guy!!! We're so so happy for Leo!!!
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 29, 2016
Congrats to @LeoDiCaprio. Great speech! — John Legend (@johnlegend) February 29, 2016
Mr @LeoDiCaprio told the truth about climate change. There's a great deal to do. Let's get to work. — Bill Nye (@BillNye) February 29, 2016
He did it! He really did it! @LeoDiCaprio, I love you #Oscars — Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) February 29, 2016/news/2016/01/15/oscarssowhite-idris-elba-creed-and-star-wars-snubs-drive-most-discussion-onlineoscars s
Unsurprisingly, the category the actor was nominated in dominated the hype on Twitter and was mentioned more times than any other grouping. Following closely behind was the Best Picture nomination, which was picked up by Boston Globe-inspired movie Spotlight.
Though he wasn’t nominated in any categories, host Chris Rock won over commentators on social with his opening monologue, receiving over 363,000 mentions in 20 minutes, 76 per cent of which carried positive sentiment.
He faced the #OscarsSoWhite controversy head on, dubbing the event as the "white people's choice awards,” telling the audience “do you realise, if they nominated hosts – I wouldn’t even get this job?”.
A number of official social activations accompanied the ceremony broadcast, including a Twitter Mirror with GIF functionality in the green room and a Periscope campaign which allowed fans to watch the Best Picture nominees recreated by broadcasters performing them in a single take.