When you think of a missing person, what do you picture?
An abduction, a murder, a bushwalking misadventure – or perhaps someone with dementia who has wandered off and got lost?
Our assumptions about missing people can be accentuated by media attention, which often focuses on crime and on certain kinds of cases and people. One example is what researchers in the United States have called “missing white woman syndrome” – where media privileges stories about younger, middle-class white women who’ve gone missing unintentionally.
