Social-media sleuthing presents a big challenge for police conducting high-profile investigations, as a case in Britain has proved
of people go missing in Britain every year. Many of them do not make it into the local press, let alone the national media. This can distress their relatives: press coverage helps police as they appeal for information and witnesses. Yet the family of Nicola Bulley, who was missing for 23 days before her body was found on February 19th in the River Wyre in Lancashire, may wish that her disappearance had attracted less attention.
The case has highlighted one of the great downsides of the internet: the amplification of voices that are better left unheard. In the days after Ms Bulley dropped her children at school, took her dog for a walk and vanished, self-proclaimed body-language experts and psychics posted videos hypothesising about what could have happened. YouTube and TikTok broadcasters turned up to film the river bank where she disappeared and to quiz passers-by. Some tried to break into nearby buildings.
Social-media sleuthing presents a big new challenge for police conducting high-profile investigations. Paul Fullwood, a former assistant chief constable for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Constabularies, says that in the past police working on missing-person cases had a “professional understanding” with journalists, which might include giving information on the understanding that it not be published.
Better communication might help. The Lancashire Constabulary has come in for a lot of criticism, much of which may be groundless. Their initial supposition, that Ms Bulley had somehow fallen into the river, may well have been correct. Yet some reckon that the police provided too few progress reports, allowing others to fill the gap. After a diving expert said she could not have fallen in, online speculation—about everything from abduction to potential suspects—grew wilder.
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