La redes sociales como herramienta de apoyo para la búsqueda de personas desaparecidas caso David Romo Cordova-Ecuador

Abstract

The phenomenon of missing people local, national, and internationally has become a more evident social nightmare. Many cases of missing persons, in Ecuador have been registered. According to the National Police Office, DINASED, and other related organizations, some of them have been solved. Nevertheless, many of the cases are still under investigation. It seems that the Estate official search requires specific and specialized elements. Since 2013, the National Direction of Crimes Against Life, Violent Deaths, Disappearances, Extortion and Kidnapping (DINASED) as the Spanish acronym states, the institution put a lot of efforts on personnel training to serve in a better way. The organization’s goal is to serve to all the families that report missing relatives. They work on expedite the actions to search and find the missing persons and presumed responsible for the crime. Under this context, this action research is based on the case of David Romo Cordova, a young quiteño disappeared since May 16th, 2013, and the social media context around this case. This action research studies the social media as a space for support, broadcasting, and complaint as well. This work required the use of qualitative method. It was based on interviews, observation, and analysis of Facebook and twitter accounts of Mrs. Alexandra Cordova, David Romo’s mom. These are the accounts that David’s mom uses to spread the word about his missing son. Alexandra Cordova uses the social media with the idea that the social media have a great ratio on reaching out people to know about his son. The achievement of a maximum broadcasting of David’s face and he being missing means a great step forward to find him and determine who is responsible of this case. This work proposes to create an informative blog regarding missing persons, with relevant information that connect similar cases in order to be resolved. The blog will also contain information about actions to follow, ways to approach cases of disappearances, ways of families approaches on similar cases. The content of this research must be validated and reliable sources to make the message sustainable. Under these circumstances, the social media are reliable and sustainable spaces to broadcast and visualization rather than not only a space to spread the word.