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CC BY-NC-ND V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
‘If you could just come forward’: the use of televised public appeals, detecting deception and progressing missing persons cases
Communication Research and Practice
2025
Appears in Open Access via Read & Publish Agreements
Abstract
Public appeals are often used in missing persons investigations to disseminate information to the public quickly to generate information and maintain public interest. Suspects currently unknown to police may also make public appeals strategically to evade suspicion. Though these appeals may provide important insight for deception detection, the empirical literature is under-researched. As such, the current paper thematically analyses 29 televised appeals to examine linguistic differences and strategies in police and media-facilitated appeals. Police-facilitated appeals were shorter in length and contained few concerns for victim welfare. By contrast, media-facilitated appeals contained more self-references and ‘vague language’. Both appeal types contained language associated with high cognitive load and psychological distancing, such as ‘exclusivisers/particularisers’. The application of this research is to better understand missing persons cases, highlighting potential synergies between the media, police, and the investigation of these cases. These synergies may provide insight for future information-gathering and deception detection processes.
Details
- Title
- ‘If you could just come forward’: the use of televised public appeals, detecting deception and progressing missing persons cases
- Publication Details
- Communication Research and Practice
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
- Number of pages
- 24
- Identifiers
- 991005794758907891
- Copyright
- © 2025 The Author(s).
- Murdoch Affiliation
- School of Law and Criminology
- Resource Type
- Journal article
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