COMMENT: How internet came to the rescue of Jackson Byrnes
IF EVER there was a case study of how the internet has fundamentally changed our world it is the story of Casino teenager Jackson Byrnes.
Opinion
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IF EVER there was a case study of how the internet has fundamentally changed our world it is the story of Casino teenager Jackson Byrnes and the crowdfunding campaign to raise $80,000 for an operation to remove his brain tumour.
We got onboard the campaign last Thursday and with a splash of publicity it took off.
Jackson had four days to raise money for his operation with Dr Charlie Teo and the story just took off with both mainstream and social media joining in.
We posted regular updates to this story on our website, which at last count had garnered about 70 comments and was approaching 2000 Facebook likes.
The ripple effect of sharing this heart-wrenching story on social media was instant and far reaching.
The Gold Coast Bulletin and the United Kingdom's Daily Mirror followed up the story and yesterday his family was on the TV program Sunrise.
Someone was reportedly, holding up copies of The Northern Star, so thank you for the free publicity.
Pre-internet, raising such a large amount of money in such a short space of time would have been almost impossible. That's a lot of meat raffles and lamington drives.
Now people can give, and give quickly, and crowdfunding puts it out to the world to help raise money, not just your home town.
Thanks to everyone's efforts Jackson has a chance at life.
His operation is scheduled for tomorrow and everyone hopes it is a success and will give the teenager the opportunity to grow old.
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