Trafficking in Truth: Media, Sexuality, and Human Rights Evidence

Small, Jamie L.

doi:10.1353/fem.2012.0025

Cited by 17 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Adolescents in the southeastern state of the study's focus have learned about sex trafficking from, primarily, news media, school, friends and family, and entertainment media. Since scholarship has documented problematic portrayals of sex trafficking in news and entertainment media (Johnston et al, 2014; Small, 2012), educators could include a media literacy component in sex-trafficking prevention curriculum to disrupt myths about sexual violence and neutralize stereotypes to better recognize and support survivors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adolescents’ Victim-Blaming Responses to Narratives About Sex Trafficking: Strategies for Curriculum Development

McKenzie

Friedman

Johnston

2022

Violence Against Women

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In the United States, sex-trafficking awareness and prevention has increasingly become part of government-mandated health education. This exploratory study surveyed 250 U.S. adolescents to learn more about the use of media narratives in curricula about sex trafficking in light of research findings about victim-blaming responses to survivor narratives, as well as adolescents’ still-developing emotion-regulation skills. Victim blaming is counterproductive to the goals of trafficking awareness and prevention curricula. Participants viewed one of four narrative messages about a sex-trafficking victim/survivor. Over half of participants reported victim-blaming responses after viewing the message. Participants reported low perceived efficacy regarding the ability to recognize the signs of trafficking, and some participants experienced intense fear responses to the messages. Victim blaming was not associated with fear or perceived efficacy, contradicting predictions from the Extended Parallel Process Model. This study concludes with recommendations for educators and others tasked with communicating with adolescents about sex trafficking.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adolescents’ Victim-Blaming Responses to Narratives About Sex Trafficking: Strategies for Curriculum Development

McKenzie

Friedman

Johnston

2022

Violence Against Women

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“…In addition to the victim and the villain, the hero is the third, central character in the sex trafficking story (Balgamwalla, 2016; Kinney, 2015; O’Brien, 2018; Small, 2012). Since the sex trafficking narrative usually involves a ‘search and rescue’ of victims, the story needs a hero to liberate the victim (O’Connell Davidson, 2015).…”

Section: Enter the Monster And The Heromentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The sex slave character is accompanied by a specific sequence of events that develop these narratives into more or less full stories. While the story centres on the stereotypical, female victim, excluding all male ones, the cast generally also includes a foreign villain and a Western rescuer (Balgamwalla, 2016; Dennis, 2008; Kinney, 2015; O’Brien, 2018; Small, 2012). The narrative comprises themes of innocence, sexual violence, and abduction or coercion (Kinney, 2015).…”

Section: Introducing the Story Of Sex Traffickingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than describing a well-substantiated problem, the dominant sexual slavery narrative can be viewed as a moral tale, which channels people's concern regarding migration and women's independence (Andrijasevic and Mai, 2016;Doezema, 2010;Pickering and Ham, 2014;Segrave et al, 2009). The narratives amplify gendered and racialized notions of sex trafficking victims, and tend to confound fiction with reality, and victims with sex workers and migrants (Doezema, 2010;Heber, 2020;Skilbrei, 2003;Small, 2012;Weitzer, 2018). This article will focus on analysing and deconstructing the popular media narrative of sex trafficking, with an emphasis on the victim.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Damsels, monsters, and superheroes: Exploring the metanarrative of sex trafficking

Heber

2023

International Review of Victimology

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Sex trafficking narratives tend to follow the same storyline: a young, female victim is lured into sexual slavery by a foreign offender, and in the end, she is rescued by a Western hero. This article examines the sex trafficking narrative, and its accompanying characters in popular media, with a specific focus on the victim. It combines sex trafficking research with theories about folk tales and concepts of purity and the sacred. Empirically, the article explores the narratives of sex trafficking in six internationally influential films and books. The analysis creates an understanding of why one particular victim, and one metanarrative of sex trafficking, continue to dominate contemporary popular media. It traces the moralistic narrative continuities of sex trafficking, and creates an understanding of why we keep repeating this particular narrative, and why we seem to need it.

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Representations of Transnational Human Trafficking: A Critical Review

Gregoriou

Ras

2018

Representations of Transnational Human Trafficking

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The collection introduction defines human trafficking and proceeds to offer an in-depth literature review that assesses the significance of attention to the collection topic, suggests new directions for research, and provides a synopsis and integrative analysis of the collective contributions of manuscripts within the collection. It starts by detailing the story of human trafficking (the types, causes, and frames of trafficking), then discusses the effects of misrepresentation on the directly affected (draws on victim hierarchy, criminalisation and secondary victimisation), and then deals with the socio-political causes and effects of misrepresentation (gender and wealth inequality, global and local politics, and secondary exploitation). It ends by providing a rationale as to the nature of the case studies the book and its contributors consider.

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Trafficking in Truth: Media, Sexuality, and Human Rights Evidence

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Adolescents’ Victim-Blaming Responses to Narratives About Sex Trafficking: Strategies for Curriculum Development

Adolescents’ Victim-Blaming Responses to Narratives About Sex Trafficking: Strategies for Curriculum Development

Damsels, monsters, and superheroes: Exploring the metanarrative of sex trafficking

Representations of Transnational Human Trafficking: A Critical Review

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