And between the Obama-Romney contest and PSY's dance moves, this year was a year of tragedy that culminated in the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut.

From January to mid-December, Storify users published more than 554,000 stories that were viewed more than 367 million times. More than 46,000 publishers around the world have embedded Storify stories on their sites, including The New York Times, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the White House, the United Nations and many more.

We looked through all the year's stories to compile our annual year in review, focusing on the media elements that had the most resonance. That's our calculation based on a combination of how many times the media element was collected in a Storify story, and factoring in how much readers engaged with that piece of media through comments, likes and shares. 

The list of top 20 media elements include many related to the American presidential vote, a story that dominated much of social media for the year. Other top news included the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on healthcare reform, the Sandy superstorm and the first foray into social media by the pope. We planned to stop at the top 10, but extended it to 20 to make sure the Connecticut school shooting was included, which likely would have ranked higher had it not happened so recently.

This photo was the most re-tweeted post ever on Twitter, and it was also the top social element in Storify, encapsulating Obama's election win in just three words and a touching photo.

As someone said, it's PSY's world ... we just live in it. You know you want to watch it one more time.

FC Barcelona fans are incredibly engaged, and the team itself uses Storify to extol their moments of glory on the field. The Argentine star Lionel Messi won the Golden Boot award for his prolific goals.

Obama makes several appearances in our year in review, befitting his status as the leader of the world's largest economy.

For being such a latecomer to social networks, Pope Benedict made a big splash with his first tweet that was widely quoted.

Obama's victory for a second term again makes an appearance in the top elements.