What Do Americans Care About? Westboro Baptist Church, Justin Beiber, Muslim Brotherhood Among Top White House Petitions

What do the Westboro Baptist Church, Justin Beiber and the Muslim Brotherhood have in common? All three were among the most popular subjects of petitions written by U.S. citizens and addressed to President Barack Obama, according to a new analysis by the Pew Research Center released Wednesday on the president's online petition system We The People.

Obama established the website in 2011 as part of his Open Government Initiative. The original support threshold that necessitated an executive branch response was set at 5,000 signatures. It was raised to 100,000 by 2013 after receiving an unexpected volume of user input, something the White House called "a good problem to have." The Pew Research Center's comprehensive study took into account the 4,799 publicly available petitions and 227 White House responses throughout the site's five-year history.

The most popular petition of all, which gathered 367,180 signatures, called for the Westboro Baptist Church to be labeled a "hate group." The church is known for its demonstrations that often intentionally target and offend groups such as the LGBT communities, Muslims and the families of soldiers killed in action. Closely following this petition was a massive plea for Obama to "establish justice and prevent a great catastrophe" by mediating in the territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan that gathered 331,916 signatures.

In third place was a petition asking that charges be filed against 47 senators who the author accused of breaking the law by trying to sabotage the Iranian nuclear treaty that was ultimately signed last year, lifting economic sanctions against Tehran in exchange for Iran limiting its nuclear program. The petition gathered 322,177 signatures.

While other requests based on major sociopolitical issues, such as one to label the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization made the shortlist, others targeted individuals made famous or infamous in pop culture. The fifth most popular petition demanded that the U.S. deport Canadian pop star Justin Beiber and the seventh most signed wanted authorities to extradite and charge Minnesota dentist Walter James Palmer, who boasted on social media about killing an iconic lion named Cecil on a Zimbabwe hunting trip.

The analysis also documented four times that citizens' petitions seemed to result in actual White House action. The instances identified included a January 2013 petition that was "instrumental" in the White House's decision to draft legislation that made it illegal for phone companies to "lock" their phones and prevent consumers from using the device with another carrier, a January 2015 petition that reportedly inspired Obama to support state laws that banned LGBT "conversion therapy," a May 2015 petition that led iconic Yankee hall-of-famer Yogi Berra to be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a January 2016 petition - the fourth most popular on the site - that apparently convinced Obama to accept an invitation to appear on political pundit Bill Maher's late-night HBO talk show.

Obama, who leaves office Jan. 20, was a public advocate of greater transparency in government, however, his administration has been criticized for maintaining a shroud of secrecy over foreign military operations including drone strikes in the Middle East and for taking punitive action against whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning.