ICIJ engagement report
@ICIJorg - 495K followers on X
Measured over 24 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 24, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 16 interactions against 495K followers, an engagement rate of 0.003%. Measured over 24 original posts, its engagement rate beats 21% of 20,444 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 3.7K times each, and 0.445% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.75% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.3 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 40% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 24 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 835 interactions, about 44x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #chinacapital, #panamapapers, #papelesdepanamá.
Measured over 24 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on October 24, 2026. Recurring tags: #chinacapital, #panamapapers, #papelesdepanamá.
Compared with accounts its own size
ICIJ's engagement rate beats 21% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (20,444 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 10 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 28% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.003%, ICIJ sits below the 10th percentile of the 204,694 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.024%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.004% |
| 25th percentile | 0.024% |
| 50th percentile | 0.143% |
| 75th percentile | 0.677% |
| 90th percentile | 2.55% |
| 99th percentile | 82.4% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 89K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 90K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 88K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 94K |
| 04:00 UTC | -5% | 76K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 75K |
| 06:00 UTC | -5% | 86K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 93K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 108K |
| 09:00 UTC | -4% | 124K |
| 10:00 UTC | -3% | 129K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 141K |
| 12:00 UTC | -3% | 154K |
| 13:00 UTC | -3% | 167K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 173K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 176K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 171K |
| 17:00 UTC | -3% | 159K |
| 18:00 UTC | -2% | 149K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 141K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 131K |
| 21:00 UTC | 0% | 116K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 100K |
| 23:00 UTC | -1% | 90K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 393K |
| Monday | +1% | 483K |
| Tuesday | -2% | 520K |
| Wednesday | -3% | 472K |
| Thursday | -2% | 430K |
| Friday | -3% | 447K |
| Saturday | +2% | 393K |
Formats this account uses
Its own posting mix on the left, and what each of those formats does across every account we track on the right. Only formats where the effect clears our publish test appear here, so an empty row is a format we could not measure rather than one that does nothing.
| Format | This account | Catalog effect | 95% interval | Accounts behind it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image or video | 4% of posts | +111% | +108% to +115% | 34K |
| Outbound link | 100% of posts | -41% | -42% to -40% | 32K |
| Typical length | - | no effect | -2% to -1% | 42K |
- 4% of this account's sampled posts carry an image or video. Across the catalog, posts with an image or video run 111% above the same accounts' other posts.
- 100% of its posts carry a link off X. Across the catalog, posts with an outbound link run 41% below the same accounts' other posts, so a large share of this account's output sits in the weakest bucket we measure.
- Its average post runs 259 characters, which falls in the 180 - 280 characters band. Across the catalog, posts of 180 to 280 characters match the same accounts' other posts almost exactly.
These are catalog-wide differences applied to this account's own posting mix, not a measurement of how each format performs for this account specifically. We keep one median per account, not one per format per account, so the second thing is not something this data can tell you.
Best tweets
- Mar 18, 202644x their median
🚨 Launching: The OSINT Tools Library A curated, investigator-first directory of tools used in real cases. → https://t.co/U5CJ3JJmHE We’re building the largest and best maintained OSINT tools resource and need your help. Reply and tag a tool we should add 👇
- Apr 13, 202618x their median
#CancerCalculus: An ICIJ-led collaboration with 47 media partners in 37 countries reveals how Merck & Co. keeps the price of its lifesaving cancer drug Keytruda sky-high, locking out patients and squeezing health care systems worldwide. https://t.co/Zo4ZGf1NJ8 https://t.co/0jc9Fa7F3X
- Sep 20, 202612x their median
ICIJ is gravely concerned for the safety of our colleague Micah Reddy (@RedMicah), ICIJ's Africa coordinator, and local journalist Mohamed Willo Ismael (“Kooki Mahmoud”). Read ICIJ's statement: https://t.co/wEc6rHVgjL https://t.co/CPFfGmjlY5
- Oct 12, 202612x their median
ICIJ identified several actors later revealed to be involved with financial crimes who together bought tens of millions of tokens directly from Tether. Among them were firms later named as laundering vehicles for North Korean hackers and the Sinaloa Cartel. https://t.co/jLkFxzBgHN
- Aug 11, 20269.7x their median
Boxing promoter Daniel Kinahan has been charged with directing the activities of a criminal organization after being extradited from Dubai to his native Ireland amid a huge security operation. Read the latest: https://t.co/oLgyCw1ToO
- Aug 30, 20267.6x their median
From @RFI: A taboo-breaking book about Vladimir Putin's rise to power and private life, written by two exiled Russian journalists, won a newly established French literary prize this week. https://t.co/j2A1GdVxW8
- Sep 20, 20266.1x their median
Chinese tech giant Huawei is on trial in New York for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and stealing trade secrets as it built its global telecommunications empire. Read the story: https://t.co/nZ0pDLAZtk
- Aug 12, 20264.9x their median
From @AP: A Syrian court on Tuesday sentenced ousted President Bashar Assad and his brother in absentia for murder, torture and crimes against humanity committed before and during the country’s 14-year civil war that left about half a million people dead. https://t.co/iK73YSvX3G
- Oct 13, 20264.8x their median
The 75 journalists who participated in ICIJ's #ChinaCapital investigation uncovered previously unknown details about ICBC's involvement in some of their countries’ most important infrastructure projects and natural resources companies. Learn more: https://t.co/kzEffW8FXL
- Oct 21, 20264.7x their median
With leaked internal records, ICIJ identified a handful of wholesale markets and other businesses around the Russian capital that made up a significant share of the cash U.S.-sanctioned payment firm A7 processed. https://t.co/WPgehKPuLY
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
Recurring topics
The most frequent hashtags in the sampled posts. They describe what this account writes about; they are not a performance signal, and the catalog-wide breakdown on the hub shows how little hashtag count moves.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 16 interactions against 495K followers, an engagement rate of 0.003%. Measured over 24 original posts, its engagement rate beats 21% of 20,444 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 3.7K times each, and 0.445% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.75% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 1.3 post a day over the last 30 days, though only 40% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 24 posts sampled, 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 835 interactions, about 44x its own typical post. Recurring topics include #chinacapital, #panamapapers, #papelesdepanamá.
- What is ICIJ's engagement rate on X?
- ICIJ (@ICIJorg) has an engagement rate of 0.003%, based on the median interactions across 24 original posts from the last 30 days against 494,869 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.003%, ICIJ sits below the 10th percentile of the 204,694 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @ICIJorg have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 21% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (20,444 accounts), which puts it in the bottom quarter for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @ICIJorg post?
- Most posts go out around 13:00 UTC, and Monday is its busiest day, at roughly 1.33 posts per day across the measured window.