IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/raagxx/v112y2022i1p266-285.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social Media and Emergency Services: Information Sharing about Cases of Missing Persons in Rural Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Vania Ceccato
  • Robin Petersson

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate the nature of information sharing in social media about missing persons by using social media data (mostly Twitter) and conventional media coverage (media archives), adopting a platial perspective to this geographical information. By focusing on the cases of three people gone missing, we report on ways in which civil society establishes relational networks through social media to collectively support local searches and share information in rural Sweden. Geographical information systems and visualization techniques underlie the methodology of this study. Findings show that the geography of information sharing in social media about a missing person is not random, revealing a globally dispersed pattern across the country. Information sharing contains more emotional than informational content, hitting a peak of spread after a person is found deceased. This finding indicates that the value of information shared by social media as a problem-solving resource might have so far been overestimated in the process of finding missing persons. In addition, tweets show indications that voluntary organizations constitute a valuable resource in rural contexts but not without impact on the existing networks of stakeholders delivering emergency services.

Suggested Citation

  • Vania Ceccato & Robin Petersson, 2022. "Social Media and Emergency Services: Information Sharing about Cases of Missing Persons in Rural Sweden," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 112(1), pages 266-285, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:112:y:2022:i:1:p:266-285
    DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2021.1907172
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24694452.2021.1907172
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/24694452.2021.1907172?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhihai Zhang & Fengxia Zhu & Yueyun Zhang, 2023. "Prevalence and patterns of mental and cognitive impairments among missing older adults in China," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:112:y:2022:i:1:p:266-285. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/raag .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.