It didn’t take long for the news of the students killed in the Chapel Hill shooting Tuesday night to spread beyond the Triangle. The story has been picked up by news agencies across the country, including The L.A. Times, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
But the news has traveled even farther, and it has done so in more forms than print media alone. Publications in Russia, Egypt, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Morocco, India, Australia and Israel are covering the tragedy, which has also captured the attention of social media users around the world.
The hashtags #muslimlivesmatter, #chapelhillshooting and #ourthreewinners have taken over various social-media platforms, linking the voices of the international community.
“I believe that social media can tell a story from the human perspective, something which traditional news has a hard time doing,” said Hamid Ali in a Facebook message, a friend of Deah Barakat, one of the three students killed Tuesday evening.
The Facebook page “Our Three Winners,” originally created by the friends and family members of the victims, is now functioning as an international forum for people to offer their condolences and commemorate Deah, Yusor and Razan. The page had more than 89,000 followers at press time, and that number is still growing.
“This page is intended to facilitate communication and will hopefully carry on their legacy of service, great character and joy for life,” said the Facebook page’s creator.
Some Facebook users are also changing their profile pictures to an image depicting the silhouettes of Deah, Yusor and Razan.
Ying-Ao Zhang, a friend of Deah Barakat’s and graduate student at Georgetown, is among those who changed their pictures.
“The monochromatic depiction of Deah, Yusor, and Razan shows the immense tragedy of the loss of not three Muslim students, but three human lives,” Zhang said in a Facebook message.
Zhang added that he plans to keep the image up as long as possible to remind people—and to remind himself—to carry on the love and the legacy of his friend.
Zhang is not alone. Hundreds of Facebook users have changed their profile pictures, including Usman Abbasi, a junior studying business administration.
“This tragedy affected everyone world wide,” Abbasi said in a Facebook message. “I changed my profile picture as a reminder to myself to never take life for granted.”
Among those affected by the tragedy are the members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, which will be holding a vigil tonight in Washington D.C.
“What we can focus on now is the fact that an act of senseless violence has brought an abrupt end to three innocent students who wanted nothing but to see and work towards positive change in this world,” Abbasi said.
