Lanka Talents

TANGENT

Local police issued an alert for Brylee and Braylen Pate two days after they were reported missing, spurring Fox 32 and other outlets to run articles. Police asked residents to watch out for a car owned by a woman allegedly connected to their disappearance, and within hours, a Florida driver spotted the car with the two sisters inside, local news outlets reported. The sisters were safe, and the driver was arrested for interfering with child custody.

SURPRISING FACT

The 3.48 million figure only includes users who clicked “share” on Fox 32’s Facebook page, so the story likely earned even more shares from other pages that posted links to the same article. For that reason, other news articles on Facebook may have reached a larger total audience than Fox 32’s story if their links were widely posted on individual pages.

KEY BACKGROUND

Several other stories about missing children have gone viral on Facebook this year, drawing millions of shares from concerned users. Out of the 10 most shared U.S. link posts of the year, two are articles about missing children and seven are prayers or Bible verses. But on a typical day, the social network is flooded with politically focused posts and articles from national outlets. So far this month, Facebook’s five most widely shared link posts are a story about the death of actor Tommy Lister by TMZ, two prayer-of-the-day posts, an article about the Covid-19 relief package by conservative pundit Dan Bongino, and a link to White House advisor Peter Navarro’s debunked voter fraud report posted by President Donald Trump.