Social media is being increasingly utilised by both the police and public to share information about missing people in London and beyond. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become both important tools in the search for missing persons, as well as places for raising awareness of appeals for help in finding them.
However, whether these appeals are effective or not is a complex debate with no clear cut answer. Social media engagement is high and posts about missing people are often shared far and wide. But the privacy and safety of the missing individual and those who know them can be put at risk when viral publicity appeals result in trolling and cyber-harassment.
The Metropolitan Police regularly post content about missing people – though they don’t share every instance that a person has gone missing. Their use of social media when dealing with the missing is reserved for those deemed high risk because of their age, vulnerabilities or medical needs, or if their disappearance is particularly out of character. They told us “For each reported missing person, we will seek to identify what the risk factors are and therefore what the likely level of risk posed is. This includes considering factors such as any potential criminality, exploitation, mental health and suicidal intent.
“We’re always really conscious that at the extreme end of risk, our response may prevent a homicide, or help recover someone subject to domestic abuse, forced marriage or child abduction.
“This formal assessment informs the action we then take and how we ensure that with such a high number of missing people reports each day, we are able to make the difficult decisions about ensuring the cases that appear to have the highest risk get resources prioritised.”
If the case is in the high risk category, an appeal will then be issued by the Metropolitan Police across social media channels, email mailing lists, and their web news page. They told us “We issue appeals to find people via social media almost every day and there have been many instances where they have been found as a direct result.
“There was one instance, a few weeks back, where we had issued an appeal to trace an autistic boy who had become separated from his family in central London. He was found after a member of the public saw our tweet and realised he was sitting opposite him on a tube train. The person called the police, and the boy was reunited with his family.”
Estefania Carrera Barragan, a student and nutrition blogger at University College London who had moved to east London in December, went missing from her home in Barking on April 16. She is still missing despite repeat publicity appeals being shared across social media in the UK, and help from the Ecuadorian Consulate in London with posting in Spanish and sharing the appeals further afield.
For social media to make a difference in finding a person who has gone missing, it has to be shared far and wide enough that somebody who has seen the person or knows where they are might have a chance of seeing it. Twitter user Luis Miguel, who doesn’t know Estefania, shared the appeal to help find her when he read about her disappearance online. He told us “The reason I shared it is it is because I always do that, when I see that someone’s missing, because I want to help their families to find them.
“I know that all these social medias have these algorithms that give more attention to information that has a lot of retweets or shares. I don’t know if they [Estefania’s family and friends] actually care that I did, but I retweeted it because this girl is also Ecuadorian, and it doesn’t cost me anything to try and help.”
Clementine Reardon, a 14-year-old girl from Twickenham, was found “safe and well” a few days after going missing from her home on April 21. Her disappearance was described as “very much out of character” and appeals to find her were shared widely across social media, including by celebrities such as actor Georgia Tennant, singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, podcaster Deborah Frances-White, and broadcaster James O’Brien.
In the time she was missing, many people who knew Clementine urged others to share her photo widely in the hope that somebody might see and recognise her. A friend of Clementine’s (who wishes to remain anonymous) told us “I don’t know to what extent social media helped find her, but it cannot be a bad thing to have thousands aware of her disappearance and send supportive messages for family and friends. It can make someone feel like they are doing something to help too.
“I think social media platforms are very useful in helping to find a missing person as they are an easy and efficient way of reaching thousands of people quickly, which means you can circulate photos etc. fast and en masse. This is beneficial as then more people are aware, which is vital in the time period close to the disappearance as that’s when the chance of finding a person is highest.”
Once she was found, Richmond Police asked those who had posted and shared the appeals for information about Clementine’s disappearance to “please delete your content out of respect for the person’s privacy.” The reason for this is because when a missing appeal is shared online, it can stay there for a very long time, potentially impacting the formerly missing person when their name is searched by future employers, friends, or even those attempting to cause them harm.
People go missing for a variety of reasons, but often, they go missing during a particularly difficult time in their life, so removing the publicity about them once they are found is important because it enables them to move on with their lives. The Metropolitan police told us “We ask that appeals are deleted once a person is found, as going missing itself is not a crime. The causes behind someone going missing can be many and varied and sometimes very personal and so it is proportionate that afterwards appeals are removed.”
Prior to social media, distribution of appeals for help in finding missing people was limited by geographic outreach- posters in local communities, and word of mouth- and whether the press would run a story on that particular missing case. Social media platforms have transformed the landscape of searching for the missing with instant international outreach that anybody can access for free, and virtual communities of large groups of people.
It has doubtless transformed how we think about finding people who have disappeared, but it also brings up questions of privacy, the right to be forgotten, and the impact on a person if they have gone missing on purpose. Should there be a way for a purposefully missing individual to remove all traces of their missing status from the internet if they do not wish to be found?