HOW THE WORLD IS TALKING ABOUT NIGERIA'S CHIBOK GIRLS @freeourgirls @chibokgirls

The girls were relaxing in their dorms at the Government Girls Secondary School in the northern Nigerian town of Chibok when gunmen arrived in trucks, cars and on motorcycles.
There were dozens of them — suspected jihadis with the Boko Haram Islamic group — and they were heavily armed. After shooting the guards, and setting fire to houses, the terrorists kidnapped nearly 300 of the girls and drove off into the woods.
That was on April 15. The girls haven't been heard from since. 

In this photo taken Monday, April, 21. 2014. Security walk past burned government secondary school Chibok, were gunmen abducted more than 200 students in Chibok, Nigeria.

Image: Haruna Umar/Associated Press

And the media, for the most part, has remained largely silent. Coverage of the missing girls has been dwarfed by the other major stories of late — the South Korea Ferry, the racist NBA owner and the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
"Maybe if the more than 200 Nigerian girls abducted from their school weeks ago were on a ferry in Korea, a jet liner in the Indian Ocean, in the owner's box at a Clippers basketball game, or were white, the world would pay more attention," Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin said, echoing the thoughts of many.
"If it had happened anywhere else, this would be the world's biggest story," said CNN's Frida Ghitis.
But now, three weeks later, a hashtag associated with their disappearance has been tweeted nearly 1 million times. 
There is a petition calling on the Nigerian government and all enabled international parties to rescue them, and more than 250,000 people have signed it. There are tumblr blogs, Facebook pages, and — finally, some would say — mainstream media coverage. 
But getting to this point was no mere accident. It was the direct result of a semi-coordinated campaign to make world leaders, the media — and you — aware of the plight of Nigeria's missing girls.

The rise of #BringBackOurGirls

Much of the digital chatter around the girls is tied to a hashtag — #BringBackOurGirls — which is nearing its one-millionth mention on Twitter. 
Its launch can be traced to an April 23 event honoring the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, recently nominated as UNESCO's 2014 World Book Capital City (Bangkok previously held that title). 
There, at the opening ceremonies, a former Nigerian government official and Vice President of the World Bank for Africa named Oby Ezekwesil spoke for the crowd in demanding the release of the school girls, saying, "Bring back the girls!"

It hummed along until April 30 when news broke that hundreds of the girls would likely be shared with Islamic militants as wives — read: sex slaves — or sold for $12 at local markets.
"We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls," one man told his family of the girls' fate. "They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants."