A woman is led away from the scene of an attack at
Garissa University in April. A story about that massacre, which killed
147 people, went viral on social media after the Paris attacks on Friday
The most-read story on the BBC News website on Sunday was about a terror attack - but not the one currently dominating the news.
Nearly 7 million people clicked on the headline
Kenya university attack kills 147
- a story about an attack on Garissa University, in the north-east of
the country, by the Somali militant group al-Shabab. It happened in
April 2015.
About three-quarters of the hits on the story came
from social media, rather than from the front page of the BBC News
website. When older stories resurface in the top 10 list on the BBC News
front page, they appear with a date stamp:
The date stamp on an older BBC News story - red circle added for emphasis
In the always-now world of social media though, it
appears many people clicked the link their friends had shared, didn't
notice the April date on top of the page, and got confused, thinking the
Kenya attack was a breaking story.
But while some of those clicking on the story were
mistaken about timing, others shared it to make a point. They were
criticising Western media organisations for allegedly failing to cover
the Kenya massacre as prominently as they covered events in Paris.
(Other commenting saw the irony of using a BBC story to make that
point).
So
who was interested in the Garissa story after the Paris attacks? The
attention wasn't being driven primarily from Kenya. Around half of the
hits on the story came from North America, with another quarter from the
UK. In total, the story attracted more than 10 million page views over
two days - or about four times as many as it did when the attack
actually happened in April.
Meanwhile on Twitter, similar
conversations were happening about attacks and natural disasters in
other places. The hashtag "Pray For the World" has been used over
400,000 times since Friday, with some trying to broaden the conversation
away from just remembering the Paris attacks, and using it to highlight
recent violent attacks with high death tolls in Mexico and Baghdad.
Title : Millions are sharing attack stories that aren't about Paris
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