#Missing to #Found: Exploring police Twitter use for missing persons investigations

ABSTRACT

Thousands of people go missing each year in Canada, with recent figures noting over 70,000 reports generated in 2019. While missing person cases can place strains on police resources, the use of Internet technology can attenuate some of the demands by aiding with the investigations. As a result, this exploratory study examines one social media tool, Twitter, for missing person investigations by police in Canada. Through logistic regression, we analyze 373 missing person tweets posted over two years (2017–2019) from 15 Canadian police services on Twitter to estimate which features are likely to increase public engagement (retweets, likes, and comments) with these tweets. Results reveal that there are several features significantly associated with higher engagement, such as images and hashtags, ergo increasing community outreach and participation, as well as the likelihood of efficiently and successfully solving these cases. Therefore, we suggest that having standardized components to missing person tweets will enhance the usefulness of this tool.

KEYWORDS:

• Missing persons
• missing person investigations
• policing
• police practices
• police social media use
• Twitter

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. These identifiers were collapsed into one variable due to low cell counts, which would ultimately exclude them from analysis. This way, we are able to assess if, in general, mentioning any type of physical characteristic has an effect on public engagement overall.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorna Ferguson

Lorna Ferguson is a PhD student in the Sociology department at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and is the Director of Operations for the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing (CAN-SEBP). Lorna’s current research focuses on evidence-based policy and practice, policing, and missing persons.

Vincenzo Soave

Vincenzo Soave is a PhD student at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and is a research associate for the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing (CAN-SEBP). Vincenzo’s research focuses on police use of social media.