By Eva Veldhuizen Ochodničanová, Alicia Heys

Despite the link between conflict and human trafficking having been globally recognized, academic inquiry investigating how the two interact continues to be limited. Given the recency of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in February 2022, this lack of literature is even more pronounced in understanding how the risks of trafficking are developing in the current context. This paper examines extant academic literature to explore what is already known about the relationship between conflict and human trafficking, situating this within the theoretical framework of routine activity theory (RAT). It analyses governmental and non-governmental organization reports emerging from Ukraine to contextualize the risk that is specific to those affected by the war. The paper identifies four key drivers of risk facing those in, or fleeing, Ukraine, which can heighten their vulnerability to human trafficking, before offering a novel and innovative typology of the ways that human trafficking can manifest as a result of conflict. The typology gives consideration to the direct and indirect links between conflict and trafficking, the geographical spaces in which trafficking can occur, and the specific forms that exploitation can take. By situating the paper within RAT and contextualizing it with evidence from the war in Ukraine, the findings of this paper provide both theoretical and empirical insights that help to expand existing knowledge on how conflict situations can increase the risk of THB.

  Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, 6(2): pp. 26–41.2024   

By Jessica H. Beard , Shannon Trombley, Tia Walker, Leah Roberts3, Laura Partain4, Jim MacMillan5 and Jennifer Midberry

Background: Firearm violence is an intensifying public health problem in the United States. News reports shape the way the public and policymakers understand and respond to health threats, including firearm violence. To better understand how firearm violence is communicated to the public, we aimed to determine the extent to which firearm violence is framed as a public health problem on television news and to measure harmful news content as identified by firearm-injured people.

Methods: This is a quantitative content analysis of Philadelphia local television news stories about firearm violence using a database of 7,497 clips. We compiled a stratified sample of clips aired on two randomly selected days/months from January to June 2021 from the database (n = 192 clips). We created a codebook to measure public health frame elements and to assign a harmful content score for each story and then coded the clips. Characteristics of stories containing episodic frames that focus on single shooting events were compared to clips with thematic frames that include a broader social context for violence.

Results: Most clips employed episodic frames (79.2%), presented law enforcement officials as primary narrators (50.5%), and included police imagery (79.2%). A total of 433 firearm-injured people were mentioned, with a mean of 2.8 individuals shot included in each story. Most of the firearm-injured people featured in the clips (67.4%) had no personal information presented apart from age and/or gender. The majority of clips (84.4%) contained at least one harmful content element. The mean harmful content score/clip was 2.6. Public health frame elements, including epidemiologic context, root causes, public health narrators and visuals, and solutions were missing from most clips. Thematic stories contained significantly more public health frame elements and less harmful content compared to episodic stories.

Conclusions: Local television news produces limited public health coverage of firearm violence, and harmful content is common. This reporting likely compounds trauma experienced by firearm-injured people and could impede support for effective public health responses to firearm violence. Journalists should work to minimize harmful news content and adopt a public health approach to reporting on firearm violence.

Beard et al. BMC Public Health, 2024.