Has India’s tripartite cooperation with Brazil and South Africa helped it combat human trafficking? A news media framing analysis spanning two decades

Abstract

In 2003, India, Brazil, and South Africa co-founded the IBSA Dialogue Forum, or IBSA, to counter marginalization and promote social equality among the Global South nations. Given the essentiality of the press in a democracy, and the difficulty in accurately measuring an elusive crime, news analysis offers an effective way to consider how (inter)national policy trickles to practice in the streets, or at citizen level. In this instance, India’s human trafficking situation in light of its IBSA co-founding/membership is considered through a mixed-methods framing-theory-informed analysis of almost 300 human trafficking stories from two top Indian dailies spanning nearly two decades. Basic quantitative findings plus a comparison among five emergent frames indicate that at least in India’s case, its IBSA co-founding and membership have had little to no influence on its human trafficking situation. This research is significant, because it questions international organizational participation effectiveness; articulates the gross social injustice of human trafficking; points out the Indian press’s role in reporting on it; and calls for other root-based approaches to stop trafficking, given how current top-down measures seem powerless to stay it.