Miss(ing) Representation: Examining How Race Shaped News Coverage of Missing Women Surrounding Gabby Petito’s Disappearance

Social Media, Newsworthiness, and Missing White Woman Syndrome: A Criminological Analysis

“…'Media framing' is defined as "the process by which a communication source constructs and defines a social or political issue for its audience" (Nelson et al 1997, p. 221). Media framing is closely linked with agendasetting, with agenda-setting theorists proposing that the media influences the topics that consumers think about, and the feelings that they have on these topics (Furey et al 2023;Slakoff and Brennan 2017;Gross and Aday 2003). Thus, agenda-setting theory allows us to understand the directional flow of issue visibility and perceived importance by audiences (Furey et al 2023).…”

“…Media framing is closely linked with agendasetting, with agenda-setting theorists proposing that the media influences the topics that consumers think about, and the feelings that they have on these topics (Furey et al 2023;Slakoff and Brennan 2017;Gross and Aday 2003). Thus, agenda-setting theory allows us to understand the directional flow of issue visibility and perceived importance by audiences (Furey et al 2023). Cripps (2021) posited that the mainstream media acts to reinforce dominant hegemonies, both producing and legitimising the lens through which issues are viewed.…”

“…It is used to describe the mainstream media's focus on missing women who are white, young, conventionally attractive, and often from 'respectable' middle-or upper-middle-class backgrounds (Liebler 2010;Jewkes 2015;Slakoff and Fradella 2019), and the media's simultaneous apparent disinterest in, and in some cases, mistreatment of, women who do not fit this description (Moody et al 2008). By highlighting the aforementioned traits associated with Missing White Woman Syndrome in missing women, in addition to the extensive use of adjectives such as 'warm-hearted', 'beautiful', 'hardworking', and 'kind', the media cultivates a damsel-in-distress narrative, which elicits both sympathy and outrage among news consumers (Furey et al 2023). Sommers (2016) observed that Missing White Woman Syndrome manifests in two distinct ways: (i) differences in whether the missing woman receives any media attention at all, and (ii) differences in the amount of attention that they receive if they do appear in the news.…”