Madeleine Mclean Case Study

On May 3rd 2007 Madeleine McCann was abducted from a holiday resort in Praia da Luz, a small town located in the Algarve region of Portugal, after being left with her twin brother and sister in an unlocked apartment while her parents dined with friends in a nearby tapas bar (Overington, 2011b; Rehling, 2012). Her disappearance prompted what has been referred to as “the most heavily reported missing person’s case in modern history” (The Daily Telegraph, 24 April, 2008), with saturation coverage akin to that which followed the death of Princess Diana (Parkin-Gounelas, 2012). and prompted substantial criticism regarding the lack of co-operation between competing police forces, which is widely believed to have hindered the investigation.
The unprecedented and sustained media interest in Madeleine’s disappearance was thought to have been fuelled partially by the fact that the case provided a quintessential example of the personalised melodramatic narratives upon which popular media thrives.
The McCann case also headlined at a time in which social media sites were enabling …show more content…
This abuse is predominately carried out by anonymous trolls on twitter, a social networking site which had been created just 1 year prior to Madeleine’s disappearance. Nearly 9 years later there are estimated to be around 200 tweets using the McCann Hashtag every hour. The aim of this project is to provide an analysis of these trolling behaviours with a focus on a group of individuals who represent some of the most aggressive trolls active