This is the Guardian.

Today, why did one woman's disappearance become a social media feeding frenzy?

The Guardian

I'm in the village who said Michael's on wire in Lancashire, half way between Preston and Blackpool.

I'm at the bench where Nicola Bully was last seen just over three weeks ago.

There are yellow ribbons tied to it, there's a handful of dog walkers who have wandered past over the past couple of hours.

Nicola was a familiar face on this dog walking route.

She was a member of the local community and she's gone.

My colleague Josh Halliday is one of many reporters who spent time in St. Michael's since Nicola Bully was reported missing.

Nicola was 45 years old. She had a partner called Paul and two daughters.

After she dropped them off at school one morning recently, she vanished.

Police said they thought she'd fallen into the river wire, which runs through this small village where she lived and out to the Irish sea.

It's a cliche that journalists use to describe crime scenes a lot of the time.

It's a tight knit area, but this does feel like a tight knit area.

There's a tiny school, a pub, a petrol station.

There are a number of small businesses, farms and that's about it.

Nicola's disappearance seemed so mysterious.

And as the police made details public, the conspiracy theories started because some people didn't trust what the police were telling them.

In 29 years police service have never seen anything like it. Some of it's been quite shocking and really hurtful to the family.

And so social media users turn themselves into amateur detectives.

They swarmed the village, searching for Nicola, taking selfies at the spot where she was last seen and flying drones overhead.

Meanwhile, the news channels had the story covered 24-7.

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