Social media has got world behind him...
CHARLIE’S army of supporters have harnessed the power of social media to spread their message across the globe.
Slogans such as SaveCharlieGard and JESUIS-CHARLIE have been widely shared online with such success that Twitter and Facebook have struggled to cope. Online comments that went viral in Italy led to the Vatican joining the campaign, followed yesterday by the Italian government. And in America tweets and Facebook posts have been published at the rate of about one a second.
Supporters have been getting their message across with emotive images. One compared Charlie and mother Connie Yates to the Madonna and child. Another painting showed a mother protecting her baby – a reference to Charlie’s parents’ refusal to let the terminally ill tot die.
The campaign to save the 11-month-old has been driven by posts linking to petitions and fundraising sites. However, some supporters say they have become victims of software that automatically classes their postings as spam.
Twitter and Facebook run programmes that weed out ‘robotic’ marketing campaigns with smilar content. It has led to complaints of censorship by social media firms. One poster said: ‘We will not be silent, we are Charlie’s Army’.