March 23, 2011 | 12:55 PM | By

On Your Mind: The Search for Emily Hershenson

FILED UNDER: The People, Adams Morgan, Race and Class, Social Media

DCentric

One of the many flyers on Irving Street NW, as of 10 a.m. Wednesday morning.

Emily Hershenson disappeared on Monday morning; in less than 48 hours, her family mounted a frantic and ultimately successful search for the 33-year old wife and mother, who was last seen in Adams Morgan. Hershenson was found earlier today, and that good news spread as quickly as the initial pleas for help with her search did. Since social media played such a prominent role in this story, I thought it might be interesting to use storify to collect your tweets about it. Read all about it, after the jump.

About the author

DCentric was created to examine the ways race and class interact in Washington, D.C., a city with a vibrant mix of cultures and neighborhoods. Your guides to the changing district are reporters Anna John and Elahe Izadi. View all posts by Anna →

  • Anonymous

    I tweeted the missing person alert after a brief internal conversation that acknowledged: 1) a missing person is always a scary thing to the person’s loved ones; 2) I only knew about this particular missing person because of her neighborhood and class; 3) dead/missing white women always get attention; 4) even so, if a tweet can help return a missing person home, that’s always a good thing. I noticed today on Facebook group page (https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_162917233761607&ap=1) that someone had posted about a 16-year-old Black teen girl who’s been missing from Baltimore since December 2010, so I tweeted that too.

  • Blanonymouse Male

    I think it says more about the missing person of color’s “community” than anything else if they go missing and no one gets on social media about it – or gets on and doesn’t get replies of concern.

  • rmpdc

    I don’t mean to suggest that race/class weren’t at play here. However. As I tweeted at the time, it seemed like the makeup of her social and professional network made a /huge/ difference – a lot of her people are in media and communications, they’re online, they’re active on Facebook and Twitter, they were subscribed to all the neighborhood listservs, etc. etc.