How Facebook and Twitter changed missing child searches
Illustration made with figurines set up in front of Facebook's homepage
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/jan/27/facebook-twitter-missing-child-searches-social-media
Every three minutes a child is reported missing in the UK; across the EU that number rises to one child every two minutes. In the US, the FBI recorded almost 467,000 missing children in 2014, which is close to one reported every minute. In the US, milk cartons, posters, flyers, meetings and traditional news reports formed the main missing child search channels until 1996, when Dallas-Fort Worth broadcasters teamed up with local police to develop a warning system that interrupted regular programming on television and radio broadcasts, and highway signs. The service, Amber Alert, is used only for the most serious of cases, sending out messages via email, text, traffic signs and digital billboards, as well as through Twitter and Facebook. International non-profit organisation Action Against Abduction long pressed for a similar system in the UK, but it wasn’t until 2012, after the abduction of April Jones, that Child Rescue Alert was activated nationally.
Newcomb says the Met operates more than 400 Twitter accounts, but also works closely with other agencies.
- In 2015 the charity created a video appeal featuring imagery of a missing girl and the person they suspected had kidnapped her. The video was shared widely and a woman spotted them.
- Extensive social media campaign in which a computer-generated composite image was estimated to have reached 47 million people on Facebook.
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