The U.S. Missing Persons Project & SPRUCE Research Lab at the University of South Florida

• In Event: Poster Session II

Abstract

This study seeks to create a national missing persons database for sociological research to aide in understanding media attention given to missing persons cases. This project aims to be the largest US missing persons and related media attention database. In order to achieve this goal, researchers utilized a team of undergraduate and graduate students who participate in SPRUCE research lab at the University of South Florida. Cases were gathered from the “National Missing and Unidentified Persons System” (NamUs), as well as the Doe Network. There are currently over 3,200 cases in the database. In addition to demographic and case characteristics, all of the names were cross-referenced with news coverage from “Access World News”, a repository of print and broadcast news, “Google”, and “Youtube”. In order to gather all media attention related to the missing persons case, both during and after the missing event. Currently, SPRUCE lab is working on coding each news article/broadcast transcript to account for information related to the victim, offender (if known), as well as the framing of the news story. An overview of this endeavor is outlined in this presentation, as well as related preliminary findings.

Authors

• Robert Perkins, University of South Florida

• Dylan Padgett, University of South Florida

• Nikki Webster, University of South Florida

• Lisa Wallace, University of South Florida

• Amelia Bennett, University of South Florida

• Valerie Kobzarenko, University of South Florida

• Leo Joseph Genco, University of South Florida

• Lauren Nicole Miley, University of South Florida

• Caitlyn Muniz, University of South Florida

• Michelle Jeanis, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette

• Bryanna Hahn Fox, University of South Florida