This week an online campaign to find a missing 14 year old girl, Serena Beakhurst, was happily successful in helping find her and bring her back to her parents. Classified by the police as a “runaway” rather than a missing person and initially ignored by the media, friends and relatives went online and quickly captured people’s attention on Twitter. A Facebook group was also started and quickly gained members.

Among the retweeters, followers and fans were several celebrities and other influential people with large numbers of their own followers. As such, the publicity grew quickly and the profile of the campaign heightened.

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