Missing children, i.e., children reported to a relevant authority as having "disappeared," constitute an important but often overlooked population. From a research perspective, missing children constitute a hard-to-reach population about which little is known. This is a particular problem in regions of the Global South that lack robust or centralized data collection systems. In this study, we analyze the composition of the population of missing children in Guatemala, a country with high levels of violence. We contrast the official aggregated-level data from the Guatemalan National Police during the 2018-2020 period with real-time individual-level data on missing children from the official Twitter account of the Alerta Alba-Keneth, a governmental warning system tasked with disseminating information about missing children. Using the Twitter data, we characterize the population of missing children in Guatemala by single-year age, sex, and place of disappearance. Our results show that women are more likely to be reported as missing, particularly those aged 13-17. We discuss the findings in light of the known links between missing people, violence, and human trafficking. Finally, the study highlights the potential of web data to contribute to society by improving our understanding of this and similar hard-to-reach populations.
翻译:从研究的角度来看,失踪儿童是一个难以接触的人口,对此知之甚少。这是全球南部地区的一个特殊问题,这些地区缺乏强有力的或集中的数据收集系统。我们在该研究中分析了危地马拉这个暴力程度高的国家失踪儿童的人口构成情况。我们将2018-2020年期间危地马拉国家警察的官方总数数据与2018-2020年期间危地马拉国家警察官方Twitter账户的失踪儿童实时个人数据进行了对比。这是一个政府警报系统,负责传播有关失踪儿童的信息。我们利用Twitter数据将危地马拉失踪儿童按单岁、性别和失踪地点分类。我们的结果显示,妇女更有可能报告失踪,特别是13-17岁的妇女。我们根据已知的失踪人口、暴力和贩运人口之间的联系,讨论了网络数据对社会的贡献潜力,我们加深了对这一群体和类似难以接近的人口的了解。