CSI: Social Media

As many of you may already know, the case of missing woman Jill Meagher was solved overnight following an arrest and the discovery of her body.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about news breaking on social media (view here). I specifically stated, “The way news is broken in society has dramatically changed. Anyone can be a journalist these days”. And again, in the case of Jill Meagher, this statement is reiterated.  

Earlier this week, well before it had been announced on traditional media that an investigation was underway into Jill’s disappearance, a social media campaign had been launched. Tweets with variations of Jill’s name had appeared in 33 million Twitter news feeds and a Facebook page named “Help Us Find Jill Meagher” had been created by her friends and family, reaching almost 114,000 likes. As the developments of this story unfolded during the week, Victorian Police released CCTV footage of Jill’s last moments, which has been shared 7432 times on Facebook.

The Herald Sun reported that many Victorians jumped on social media the moment news broke that a man had been arrested over Jill Meagher’s disappearance. Her name had almost 12 million Twitter newsfeeds trending across Melbourne and Australia.

Last night while watching the news, my mum recounted a similar story of a girl named Sarah McDermod, who went missing in the early 1990’s. In the moments it took Sarah to walk from the train platform to her car, she had vanished. Police were never able to find her body and to this day, her disappearance remains a mystery. Of course there are probably hundreds of similar stories such as this which have occurred over the years years.

But what a difference twenty years makes. As technology has progressed, the introduction of CCTV footage and the power of social media are just beginning to aid society. Victoria Police media unit supervisor Natalie Webster said “social media campaigns could assist with highlighting an incident or investigation and take information to an audience that was not engaged in traditional media”. The use of social media to expand reach and share information such as CCTV footage inevitably aided Victorian Police solve Jill’s case in six days. There’s no doubt that this kind of technology could have also been handy in Sarah’s disappearance but obviously, was not available.

The power of social networking has developed immensely over the years and its potential to solve cases such as Jill’s is only just starting to be realized and harnessed.