By Alexander Russo
Lots of stories have been written about schools and COVID already this year.
Some of them have gone viral, generating millions of Facebook and Twitter engagements.
According to a data company called NewsWhip, here are the 100 top COVID education stories by social media engagement from January 14th to April 12th, based on the story’s headline, summary, url, or metadata.
All together, they have generated over 9 million social media engagements, excluding direct pageviews and other forms of readership.
Some highlights:
Looking down the list, you’ll see that many of the stories are the kinds you’d expect, focusing on federal funding for schools, whether or not teachers should be prioritized for a vaccine, and the effects of remote learning on parents.
But you may or may not be surprised to see that there are also more than a dozen stories about death, hospitalization, and teen suicide.
School COVID stories featuring teachers dying are two of the top 10 most-shared school COVID stories during this recent three-month period. They are the 5th and 6th most-shared COVID school stories on social, generating upwards of 300,000 Facebook interactions each.
At #34 is a WISN story about a Kenosha teacher who says she got COVID at school and gave it to her husband, who died. There’s also a February story from local TV station KHOU about a Houston-area teacher who died of COVID, which generated 373,000 Facebook interactions.
The top 100 list also features stories about kids dying from COVID, kids losing parents to COVID, and teen suicides.
A New York Times story about student suicides in Las Vegas is the 4th most popular education story on the list, generating 367,000 Facebook interactions. At #25 is a February KSAT story about a San Antonio student who died from COVID. At #33 and #51 are NBC and CNN stories about kids who’ve lost a parent to COVID. There’s also a much-shared CNN story about a high school football player who killed himself.
The COVID pandemic has killed over 560,000 Americans since last spring, including tens of thousands during recent months. However, the numbers for school staff and children are much smaller. According to AFT figures cited by the New York Times at the end of January, 550 school employees had died of COVID. According to Statista, 246 Americans ages 0-17 have died of COVID as of the end of March.
Thanks to NPR reporter Miles Parks, who reported last month about the large numbers of vaccine death stories that appeared among most-shared COVID vaccine stories (Fearmongering Vaccine Stories Go Viral Online) and to NewsWhip for sharing its data.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Russo
Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.
Visit their website at: https://the-grade.org/
