Good news has been a boon for independent publishers, too. Lori Lakin Hutcherson, the founder and editor in chief of Good Black News, said that stories on her site have been spreading “like wildfire” recently.

“Just looking at shares and clicking through,” she said, “these are stories that have been about 12 times more popular than the standard.” Good Black News has always attracted a steady audience of black readers, Ms. Lakin Hutcherson said, but in the last two months she’s seen an influx of interest outside her usual demographic.

Branden Harvey, the founder of Good Good Good, said that in seeking out these stories, readers aren’t necessarily looking for an escape from the news. “More than just wanting to be distracted from Covid, they want a genuine sense of hopefulness in the response to Covid,” he said.

“It’s not that people don’t want news about the coronavirus,” Ms. Lakin Hutcherson said. “They just want news about it that’s more positive or that are showing people come together and fight this and offering ways individuals can help.”

Uplifting Memes for Covid-19

Just as Facebook boosted good news in the early 2010s, Instagram has become a place for positive storytelling to proliferate. Good news has spread on popular meme accounts over the last several weeks, and several account administrators have begun trading positive stories in a group chat.

George Resch, a fixture in the Instagram meme world known online as @Tank.Sinatra, created a good news account in 2017 after Hurricane Harvey. He publishes across platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, but he said that Instagram is where the posts perform best. “I’m seeing more growth on my page than I’ve seen since the first year,” he said.