Mediating Justice in Sex Trafficking
A closer look to media representations and discourses about the sex trade in the context of the Epstein case
María de la Huerga Alonso
Stockholm University
Department of Journalism, Media and Communication (JMK) Master of Arts – 120 ECTS
Global Media Studies. June 2020
Supervisors: Anna Roosvall & Alexa Robertson
Mediating Justice in Sex Trafficking
A closer look to media representations and discourses about the sex trade in the context of the Epstein Case María de la Huerga Alonso
Abstract
Sex trafficking, the fastest growing form of human trafficking, exacerbates among the world’s most vulnerable and marginalized women and girls. News media, as powerful social institutions, have the potential to shape opinions and attitudes towards critical issues (Sobel 2014). So how does two of the most internationally influential newspapers report about the sex trade? Seeking answers, I study sex trafficking news articles published from January 2019 to February 2020 by The Guardian and The New York times about the sex trade in the context of the highly mediatic Epstein case. From a media justice and feminist perspective (see Fraser. 2009; Silverstone. 2007; Couldry. 2013; Friedman and Johnston. 2013) I design an explanatory sequential mixed method study. In the first stage of the study I conduct a quantitative content analysis of 74 articles to explore wether the Epstein case may be reflected in the reporting on sex trafficking, more generally in the amount of coverage and its content. In the second stage of the study I conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on a smaller sample of 6 articles, to gain insights into how are victims, perpetrators and patriarchal power abuses in the sex trade discursively constructed. The findings emerging from the study provide empirical evidence to suggest that: (I) marginalized women have unequal accesses to media recognition and representation in the studied sample. (II) These articles tend to underrepresent and misrepresent victims and survivors, their voices and experiences while prioritizing male, powerful and privileged ones. (III) The studied articles contain discourses that legitimize patriarchal views of sexual violence and slavery.
Key Words
Sex trafficking, sex trade, human rights, (media) justice, (media) responsibility, postwestphalian, representation, recognition, discourses, power, ideology, patriarchy.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ……….…………6
1.1 Research Aim and Research Questions ……….10
1.2 Thesis Structure ………..…..….……11
2. Background ………11
2.1 Human Trafficking: Sexual slavery ……….….….12
2.2 The Epstein Case………13
3. Previous Research and Theoretical Framework .………15
3. 1 Literature Review: Starting Points and Critique………..……..15
3.2 Mediating Justice ………..17
3. 3 Gendering the Battleground:CDA ………..….. 21
4. Materials and Methods .……….………..24
4.1 Research Design……….…….26
4.2. Quantitative Content Analysis ………..….27
4.2.1 Sampling Procedure & Material Gathering………..…..…27
4.2.2 Coding Procedure: Variables and Categories of Analysis ………….……29
4.3 Critical Discourse Analysis ……….……32
4.3.1 Sampling Procedure ……….….….32
4.3.1Analytical Strategies………33
4.4 Limitations, Reliability, Validity………..……34
5. Results and Analysis………..……..…36
5.1 Quantitative Content Analysis Results..……….…….36
5.2 CDA Results ..………..….……..48
6. Discussion ..………..……..…..55
7. Conclusion………58
References ……… 61
Appendix ………..…65
APPENDIX 1: Codebook ………..…66
APPENDIX 2: Articles & CDA Schemes ………79
List of Acronyms
UN- United Nations
UNODC- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ILO- International Labour Organization
CDA- Critical Discourse Analysis NYT- New York Times
US- United States
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all my professors and classmates in the Global Media Studies Master's Program, who have helped me learn and grow these past two years. In particular I would like thank both my thesis supervisors, Anna Roosvall and Alexa Robertson. Not only they are my role models in the scholarly field of media studies, but have also demonstrated to be caring, efficient and professional supervisors. Last but not least, I would like to thank all women in my life who have taught me to fight, listen and never be silent in situations of injustice.
1. Introduction
Sex trafficking -one form of trade and slavery- has been around for centuries, but it has grown to unfathomable scale. While human trafficking has become the world’s fastest growing criminal enterprise, sexual exploitation continues to be the most detected form of trafficking across regions (UNODC 2018; ILO 2017). The last United Nations report estimates there are approximately 4.8 million victims of sex trafficking worldwide, of which 99% are women and girls (ibid).
It is undoubtedly a gendered issue that exacerbates among females, raising questions about fundamental human rights, gender-based violence and justice (Raymond & Hughes.
2001; Gulati 2010; Johnston & Friedman. 2013; Johnston, Friedman & Shafer. 2014; Sobel 2014). Additionally, the sex trade aggravates among the world’s most vulnerable and historically marginalized women and girls (Kelly. 2004). Such as children, victims of forced displacement, women experiencing poverty, lack of opportunity or access to education, or homeless among others (UNODC 2018: 3, 31).
Since it is global problem, is should also matter to global publics, as transnational media flows bring recognition of distant “others” and transborder injustices to new proximities (Fraser. 2009). News media play a key role in shaping public discourse and people’s attitudes around critical issues (Sobel. 2014). As we live in an era of increasing public debates on sexual abuse and women’s rights, it is relevant to investigate how sex trafficking is being covered by journalists. In particular, question arises of wether and how international newspapers are reporting on the issue and deal with its victims and perpetrators.
When Jeffrey Epstein, a high profile sex offender, was arrested on July 2019 for sex traffick, a mediatic storm blew up as victims started coming forward to connect Epstein with high profile names like Donald Trump and Prince Andrew (Mazzei & Rashbaum. 2019).
Since previous research has shown how celebrity stories may shape and even increase media coverage about deeper social issues (Maxwell et al. 2000; McCarthy 1995), I want to explore wether the introduction of the Epstein case into the public discourse could be reflected in media reporting of the larger issue of sex trafficking.
Hence, my broad aim is to study international news media reporting and discourses about the sex trade. Specifically news articles published by The New York Times and The Guardian, before during and after the Epstein case made the headlines. In the first stage of the study I will conduct a quantitative content analysis of 74 articles to explore wether the Epstein case may be reflected in the reporting on sex trafficking, more generally in the amount of coverage and its content. In the second stage of the study I will conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on a smaller sample of 6 articles, to gain insights into how the sex trade, victims and perpetrators can be discursively constructed in news coverage. Will the misogynistic and patriarchal abuse of power inherent to sex trafficking come across, be challenged or normalized?
The point of departure of this study is that media justice is a key principle if the systematic exclusion of vulnerable groups and at-risk societal communities by the media is to overcome (Silverstone 2007; Couldry 2012; Roosvall & Tegelberg 2020). This means that Fraser’s framing of justice (2009; 2012) is central to the theoretical framework of the study.
As will be explained later, Fraser’s theoretical approach seeks to expand the boundaries of justice, exploring how it could be reframed as new challenges and struggles emerge from a transnationalizing public sphere. She envisages two different but interlinked dimensions for justice, which are the moral/social scale and the geographical scale. The moral or social scale of justice is bounded by three principles: first, the redistribution of means, second, the recognition of identity and third, political representation.
This way, this research builds on the ideas of identity recognition and representation and operationalizes them from a media perspective as two interlocking axes to fight social injustice. In terms of recognition, Couldry has argued not only that media plays a crucial role in providing recognition, but also how injustices arise when certain groups of people are not given proper recognition within media institutions and outputs (Couldry 2012: 112,113).
Additionally, while Fraser’s process of representation refers to political representation, Roosvall & Tegelberg (2020) are among those who have pointed out how media has the ability to expose injustices to the public as they are essential framing agents in modern societies.
The second dimension of justice in Fraser’s theory is the geographical scale. As she recognizes the challenges of identifying the right scales of justice to resolve conflicts in an increasingly globalized world, she advocates for a reframing of justice that focuses on the
“who” - the people involved in it. As stated above, sex trafficking is a global issue in nature.
Thus, given the current global media landscape where information travels with absolute disregard for borders (Fraser 2009), a postwestphalian approach to media justice becomes essential in the understanding of a just sex trafficking news reporting. Journalism’s traditional watchdog role, exposing injustices and giving voice to those groups often pushed outside mediatic representations, becomes indispensable in news reporting about the sex trade.
Because of this, at the verge between media and justice questions about media responsibility arise, which is the second central concept of this study. In this line of thought, several scholars have pointed out the need for morality and responsibility if the media ecology is to be a just one.
Of particular relevance to the study are the ideas of Silverstone (2007) and Couldry (2012), as their insights on media ethics have to do with the creation of common ground of understanding on media responsibility. For both authors media holds great responsibility due to its power in society and its potential ability to mitigate injustices and inequalities. Since previous studies (Gulati 2010; Friedman and Johnston 2013; Sobel 2014) have pointed out media’s blind spots towards sex trafficking victims, their voices and stories, media responsibility becomes significantly useful approach for this study.
Lastly, the third central concept in this paper is discourse. As mentioned earlier, CDA will be employed as a methodological tool to study the construction of the sex trade in news reports. But it is a theoretical model as well as a method (Hansen & Machin 2013: 117). The field of CDA has traditionally brought up questions about processes of critique, power and ideology in a continued attempt to confront social injustices. In particular, it has been used to study how certain knowledge that perpetuates hegemonic power and ideological dynamics is produced and reproduced in society by texts and discourses (Van Dijk. 2003; Fairclough 1989).
Because of the gendered nature of the violence in the sex trade, I have chosen to use a feminist approach to CDA that brings misogynistic power abuses and patriarchal ideology to the center of the discussion when analyzing sex trafficking news media discourses. What this means in practice when applying a feminist approach to CDA to news reports will be explained in Section 4. Materials and Methods.
When it comes to previous research of relevance to this study, Gulati (2019) Sobel (2014), Johnston and Friedman (2013), and Johnston, Friedman and Shafer (2014) have documented a number of problems in news coverage of human and sex trafficking. Some of their findings underscore an over reliance on official sources, a dominant focus in policymaking and crime and narratives that leave the victims’ experience outside of the stories. These findings, which will be further discuss in Section 3, suggest a tendency to mis- represent and under-represent both the victims as well as the scope of the problem.
As will also be argued in Section 3, scholarly research in the media studies field has mostly focused on the conflict of human trafficking as a whole which is extremely broad, while sex trafficking specifically has received significantly less scholar attention.
Additionally, given the gender-based oppression intrinsic to both human trafficking and the sex trade, it is striking how rarely previous studies have employed a feminist perspective that brings patriarchal power relations to the discussion when studying trafficking news media coverage. Neither media justice and nor media responsibility have been addressed in this particular scholar context. Moreover, most of the previous studies have been published between 5-10 years ago and mostly relied on quantitative content analysis as the only method. Also, they heavily focused on articles only published by U.S newspapers while European outlets have been overlooked. This literature gap is also a crucial reason that motivates the present study.
Take as a whole, these considerations mean the study reported here will shed new light on how international news media informs the public about sex trafficking, its victims and perpetrators, by looking at news coverage and discourses. Specifically, what these media representations can tell us about media’s responsibility in portraying justly or unjustly marginalized others.
1.1 Research Aim and Research Questions
The aim of this study is to shed new light on how international news media informs the public about sex trafficking, its victims and perpetrators. I do so in the context of the Epstein scandal to analyze how it may be reflected in the reporting of sex trafficking and what these media reporting and discourses can tell us about media justice, responsibility and representation of power abuses in the sex trade. In order to do so, I analyze news articles published between January 2019 and February 2020 in the online editions of The Guardian and The New York Times. This way the study is conducted in two stages. In the first stage I conduct a quantitative content analysis on a sample of 74 articles to document the amount and content of sex trafficking news reporting. In order to achieve this, I pose the following research questions:
RQ 1. To what extent were sex trafficking stories related and unrelated to the Epstein case reported before during and after the scandal?
RQ 2. What were the dominant actors, sources, themes and geographical scales presented across articles and throughout the studied period?
RQ. 3 What were the dominant sex trafficking causes and remedies presented across articles and throughout the studied period?
Further information about how the elements presented in RQ 2 and RQ 3 will be operationalized can be found in Section 3.
In the second stage of the study I will conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis in a smaller sample of 6 articles in order to do two things. The first is to study how sex trafficking, its victims and perpetrators are discursively constructed. The second goal is to examine wether there is anything in these discourses that could be thought to either perpetuate or challenge the power abuses and patriarchal ideology inherent in the sex trade.
In order to achieve this, I pose the following research questions:
RQ 4. How are sex trafficking, its victims and perpetrators discursively constructed in the chosen news articles?
RQ 5. Is there anything in this discourses that could be thought to either perpetuate or challenge the misogynistic power abuses and patriarchal ideology in the sex trade
The answers to all these questions matter to study in various ways. They will establish how much attention sex trafficking receives in the chosen newspapers and time periods, as well as the recognition and representation of the different actors involved in it, from victims to perpetrators. These questions will also provide answers about international discourses on the global sex trade. Additionally, the results will also uncover who has agency, who gets to speak and in what terms in the selected sample, which is a crucial part on the study of transnational media justice, responsibility and power. Lastly, the answers to these questions matter because media discourses are crucial in the pursuit of social change, justice and shape of power relations.
1.2 Thesis Structure
In Section 2, I provide background information on sex trafficking. By introducing historical information on the sex trade, I emphasize the transnational and gendered nature of the issue and present the Epstein criminal case. In Section 3, I begin by reviewing previous research that is relevant to the present study and continue by discussing the central theoretical concepts and approaches that guide this paper. Section 4 focuses on the material, sampling procedure, research design and methods used to answer each of the research questions. It also discusses the research limitations in terms of reliability and validity. Then, Section 5 presents the results emerging from the quantitative content analysis and the CDA, while providing meaningful answers to the formulated research questions. Section 6 engages in a discussion of the results and poses questions for future research. Finally, Section 7 highlights the most significant conclusions from the study and its significance for the field.
2. Background
In this section I introduce the reader in the underground world of human slavery in order to zoom in the problem of contemporary sex trafficking. While I provide relevant historical and contextual information on the issue, I elaborate on the fundamental rights that are being systematically violated through this practice and the transnational and gendered nature of this form of slavery. Later, I move on to present the Epstein criminal case and consequent mediatic storm formed around it in connection to the scope of the present study.
2.1 Human Trafficking: Sexual slavery
Records show that slavery systems have existed among populations and across territories from ancient times. However, efforts to address and fight against the systematic exploitation of individuals only became part of the international community’s agenda in the late 1990s, according to the United Nations (UN. 2014: 2).
In fact the first recognized definition of human trafficking was incorporated in 2000 for the first time United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, and it reads as follows:
“ “Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”
(UN. 2014: 2)
Furthermore, the United Nations also highlights that trafficking affects all regions and most countries in the world, targeting women, men and children for a variety of purposes such as forced labour, removal of organs, forced marriage and sexual exploitation (UN.
2014). However, according to latest report by the International Labour Organization (2017), among the approximately 40 million people that are estimated to be current victims of modern day slavery, women and girls account for 71% of the victims (ibid. 2017: 5). This number acquires a horrific dimension as females constitute 99% of sex trafficking victims (ibid. 2017: 8), being sexual slavery the most detected form of human trafficking worldwide (UNODC. 2018: 10). Indisputably, females are most affected by human trafficking in general and sex trafficking specifically. In the process, many of their human rights are systematically violated, such as their right to liberty and security, to be free from gendered violence, to not be submitted to servitude and to not be discriminated in the basis of race, color, and sex, among others. (UN. 2014: 4).
As this research studies media coverage and discourses on sex trafficking, its victims and perpetrators, all of the information presented above highlights the need for a feminist approach connecting patriarchal structures that lead to women’s oppression through media discourses. Furthermore, the inherent vulnerability and marginalization of these women emphasizes the need to analyze their recognition (or misrecognition) and representation (or misrepresentation) in the media in terms of media responsibility and justice (Fraser. 2009;
Couldry 2012; Silverstone 2007). Moreover, the available data not only shows sex trafficking to be a gendered problem, but also unveils the transnational and global nature of the conflict.
Given the current globalized public sphere, this Fraser’s (2009) proposal on reframing justice by circumscribing the “who” of justice within a postwestphalian approach.
2.2 The Epstein Case
2.2.1 The Case and Criminal Records
On July 6, 2019, Jeffrey E. Epstein -a registered sex offender and millioner financer- was arrested under sex trafficking charges and sexual abuse of underage girls (Mazzei &
Rashbaum. 2019). As dozens of victims continue to come forward connecting Epstein with powerful figures like Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton or Donald Trump, the case continues to receive significant media attention as the criminal investigation develops.
However, it is necessary to review his most notorious previous cases since by the time he was arrested in July 2019 he already had a long criminal record dating back to 2005. Some of the charges involved molestation of minors and solicitation of prostitution with a 14 year old minor, among other (McLaughlin and Frias. 2019).
In 2008 Epstein served only 13 months in jail in Florida after pleading guilty for soliciting a minor for prostitution. This was the result of a widely controversial plea deal negotiated between Epstein and Alexander Acosta, who was then the United States attorney in Miami (Pilkington.2019). By 2015 several civil lawsuits had been filed by victims and accusations from survivors were made against Jeffrey Epstein and his then partner Ghislaine Maxwell, alleging they had been continuously abused as teenagers by Epstein and several of his friends as well as recruited for sexual exploitation (McLaughlin and Frias. 2019).
The year after, a woman filed a lawsuit claiming Donal Trump and Epstein brutally raped her at an orgy hosted by the later one when she was 13 years old. While Trump denied the accusations the woman abruptly dropped the lawsuit later that year, according to one of her layers, due to several threats (Yuhas. 2016). In 2018, before several of Epstein’s accusers had the chance to testify in a civil lawsuit set for trial, he reached a settlement with them for an undisclosed amount of money. (McLaughlin and Frias. 2019).
2.2.2 The Context and the Media
In November 2018 investigative journalist Julie K. Brown published in the Miami Herald the three part series “Perversion of Justice: Jeffrey Epstein” based on her year-long investigation into Epstein’s criminal past. Brown identified around 80 women who said to be victims of sexual abuse and rape. Some of them, young as 13 years old at the time of the abuse, were not only abused by Epstein but also trafficked to other men in his inner circle with the purpose of sexual exploitation. The journalist persuaded several of them to narrate and share their stories (Pilkington.2019; Brown. 2019). Shortly after the stories broke, investigations and court rulings concerning Epstein’s alleged criminal activity followed. In February 2019 a federal judge ruled that the 2008 agreement between Epstein and prosecutors, including Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, was illegal.
The ruling determined that Acosta had violated the law by favoring Epstein to sign the deal without telling the victims in advance (Berman. 2019). After months of investigation, on July 2019, prosecutors were able to arrest Epstein under charges of sexual abuse, sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex traffick (McLaughlin and Frias. 2019). After pleading not guilty to all charges he was jailed and denied bail afterwards.
On August 10 he was found dead in his cell by apparent suicide according to official records.Weeks later the federal sex trafficking charges against Epstein were dropped as prosecutors moved to dismiss the criminal indictment against him (Helmore. 2019; Pengelly.
2019). However, several criminal investigations have been opened into other people associated with Epstein and members of his inner circle based on the victims’ stories (Reilly 2019; Helmore 2019).
3. Previous Research and Theoretical Framework
In this section I begin by reviewing previous studies that are relevant for the present study. I focus on the authors’ most valuable findings that laid the ground as starting points for this study and I discuss possible limitations in previous literature and research gaps. Then I continue by discussing central theoretical concepts and approaches that I use to articulate the epistemological framework that guides this paper.
3. 1 Literature Review: Starting Points and Critique
Scholarly research in the field of media studies have mostly focused on the problem of human trafficking in general, which is extremely broad, while sex trafficking specifically has received significantly less scholarly attention. Yet it is necessary to look at both, what has been done and what hasn’t in order to shine a light on potential contributions to the existing research spaces. Thus, in this section I present the most interesting and relevant studies for the present study.
Johnston and Friedman (2013) investigated narratives of blame in sex trafficking news coverage and suggested that articles placed blame in traffickers and even the victims more often than in the men who paid for sex and abused them. Later on, Johnston, Friedman, &
Shafe (2014) analyzed major U.S newspaper articles and highlighted that most articles didn’t contemplate the “why” of the issue, neglecting reasons and remedies surrounding the sex trade. Also, they found that while stories relied on official sources they often lacked the victim’s side of the stories.
All these are valuable findings for future research as they suggest tendencies to under- represent and mis-represent victims and their stories, as well as a lack of investigative work on the underlying causes and potential solutions to fight the sex trade. Lastly, their results also show that most sex trafficking articles were event-driven. Therefore, they concluded this was problematic as coverage would arise from a specific event which portrayed the sex trade as an episodic issue rather than thematic.
However, I argue further research could be needed to determine wether an event-driven tendency as presented above is a problematic characteristic in itself. For instance, a particular event might help increase news coverage about an issue long ignored by media. This way coverage could move away from the particular incident and cover broader social problems involved in it. In this sense, previous studies found that celebrity involvement in stories have the potential to catapult media’s attention on underlying social issues for a period of time (Maxwell et al. 2000; McCarthy 1995). One study in particular (Maxwell et al. 2000) found that the mediatic attention on domestic violence intensified upon the O.J Simpson case, leading to an increase on news media coverage on domestic violence stories unrelated to the case. Thus, the incident served as a hook to bring domestic violence into the public discourse while before it was often ignored.
In accordance with this line of thought, similar circumstances exist around both the O.J Simpson and the Epstein cases. High profile public figures and celebrities are involved in both of them, the Epstein scandal ran for months like the O.J Simpson case did and both concern violent crimes against women. Hence, it is interesting to study the extent to which stories related and unrelated to Epstein were reported during the selected time period.
Furthermore, previous research provides support in my strategy of analyzing more than news coverage quantity and looking at content. Thus, the aforementioned study (Maxwell et al. 2000) showed that media’s framing and focus of domestic violence didn’t change after all.
For this reason, the present study will not only study the amount of media coverage given to sex trafficking in light of the Epstein case, as posed in research questions 1. But also diverse elements in the articles content such as themes, actors, sources and geographical scales as posed in research question 2, as well as remedies and causes as posed by research question 3.
Moving on to the other two relevant studies, Gulati’s study (2010) monitored news articles published by U.S news outlets and concluded that they legitimized dominant views on human trafficking by mostly relying on official sources, while marginalizing alternative ones. This way, articles lacked criticism over the issue, focused heavily on crime and very few included the victim’s voices in the narrative. Sobel (2014) found similar results when comparing news coverage published in the USA, India and Thailand. The scholar also found a dominant focus in crime and policymaking while the victim’s stories remained unexamined.
In sum, Gulati and Sobel also found significant problematic patterns which pushed the victims’ voices outside the narratives while perpetuating hegemonic ideas on the sex trade.
While previous studies present extremely valuable findings, it presents potential limitations leaving some research spaces unexplored. Firstly, it has mostly focused on U.S news coverage, leaving European news outlets completely unexamined. Nonetheless, according to the U.N report Western Europe is one of the four world regions where sex slavery is the most prevalent form of human trafficking (2017:30). Secondly, previous research have mostly been published between 4 and 10 years ago. Consequently, this study aims to fill that research gap by focusing on recently published online articles by both British and U.S based newspapers. Additionally, previous literature has heavily relied on quantitative content analysis to conduct their research. Nonetheless, the application and combination of other methods like CDA in this case, could help different findings to emerge.
Furthermore, like Hansen and Machin argue, content analysis may be able to show us patterns systematically in a reliable way, but it can’t allow us to draw deeper meaning from the results or its social significance (2013:112). This, must be achieved through both a qualitative method and a clear theoretical framework. This way the present research also aims to fill this gap concerning the methodology employed.
Last but not least, another gap concerns the theoretical framework employed by scholars when studying human or sex trafficking in relation to media. In many of the above studies (Gulati 2010; Sobel 2014; Johnston, Friedman & Shafer. 2014), Entman’s framing theory (1993) guided their epistemological approach. I argue that repeated use of same theoretical lenses may leave very little room for new ways to explore and interpret the material, what could limit the ability of new results to emerge as well. It is in part by interpreting its results within the framework of a previously unused theoretical perspective that this study helps to fill the gap. That theoretical perspective is presented below.
3.2 Mediating Justice & Responsibility
The news stories published by the Miami Herald, sparked amidst a cultural context fueled by the #MeToo movement, shed a light on the power dynamics behind high profile criminal cases and the protective shield around wealthy well connected men.
The stories uncovered how Epstein, embodying male privilege, perpetuated sexual violence against girls and women over time, while protected by his elite impunity.
Consequently and most importantly in light of the present study, these investigative news stories have set an example of how “media is fundamental not only for democracy in itself but also for the pursuit of justice in general” (Sen, 2010: 254). Thus, as argued above it is worth examining international news coverage of sex trafficking, and especially what it tells us about media justice, media responsibility and how media discourses may express, perpetuate or challenge the patriarchal ideology and power abuses intrinsic in the sex trade.
As this section focuses on media justice and responsibility, Fraser’s ideas on justice (2009; 2012) are most useful to start laying the theoretical ground. As mentioned earlier, Fraser’s theoretical approach seeks to expand the boundaries of justice and reframe it within new challenges and struggles emerging from a transnationalizing public sphere. For Fraser there are two different but interlinked dimensions for justice, the moral/social scale and the geographical scale, which I further opperationalize from a media perspective.
The moral/social scale in Fraser’s theory is bounded by three principles: first, the redistribution of means, second, the recognition of identity and third, political representation.
These three concepts connect economic, cultural and political remedies respectively as three interlocking axes to fight social injustice. However, this study explores the possibility to articulate recognition within the cultural realm and representation within the political sphere through a media perspective as another fundamental way to pursue justice.
In terms of recognition and the media, Couldry has explained how injustices arise when certain groups of people are not given proper recognition within media institutions and outputs (Couldry 2012: 112,113). It is therefore an injustice when someone is prevented a lack of voice, access or participation to any means of media recognition. Given the highly mediatized nature of our current societies, media unequivocally plays the crucial role in providing recognition to individuals as moral and social agents, which is linked to the
“fundamental value of giving them a voice and allowing them to participate in social processes” (ibid:113). Couldry avoids to formulate this ideas in terms of any specific models of democracy as he aims to build a normative and global understanding about media justice.
Nonetheless he does acknowledge the potential of media recognition to contribute to a more just and effective democracy (Couldry 2012: 103).
This resonates with Sen’s ideas (2010) on the importance of a healthy media ecology for the pursuit of justice and democratic processes. He recognizes three elemental contributions media makes in this sense: (i) freedom of speech to understand the world better, (ii) the dissemination of knowledge, and lastly and most relevant for the present discussion (iii) the protective function in giving recognition and voice to the neglected and disadvantage (ibid: 252-254).
In terms of representation, in Fraser’s theory (2009) it concerns the need for fair political representation as a path to justice, with a key role assigned to political participation.
This way, when individuals are excluded from political participation a misrepresentation occurs, and consequently a form of injustice takes places. However other authors (Silverstone 2007; Roosvall & Tegelberg 2020) have pointed out the power of proper media representation to expose injustices to the public as they are essential framing agents in contemporary societies. Hence it can be argued that the right to a fair media representation is equally important to the right of political representation, in the pursuit of justice.
Like Silverstone argues, media are also institutions that can act justly, but also unjustly by underrepresenting or denying the voices of others. Therefore, if they can’t speak up or they can’t be heard; “if distortion outweighs translation, we are condemned at best to silence and at worst to the disasters of misrepresentation and misunderstanding” (Silverstone 2007:
145). Silverstone specially refers to the voices of the diasporic and the marginal others, the minorities. Accordingly, sex trafficking is a gender-based violence and exploitation whose victims are among the world’s most vulnerable and historically marginalized women and girls (Kelly 2004). From children, victims of forced displacement or women in situation of poverty, to women who lack opportunities or access to education, among others (UNODC 2018: 3, 31).
In addition to this, as suggested by events following the publication of the Miami Herald stories, media has the potential to contribute to processes of justice. Not only because it has the power to influence and shape public discourses, in this case about sex trafficking and its victims. But also because it has the potential to impact policymaking (Sobel 2014;
Johnston, Friedman & Shafer. 2014) as well as the criminal justice system, encourage action and shape people’s attitudes towards the issue.
Therefore, the media justice that this study seeks to operate with shall be one based on the fair recognition of sex trafficking victims, which concerns the extent of their participation in the news articles through their voices and experiences, as well as on the fair representation of the issue. This means the discursive construction of sex trafficking, the violence against the victims, and the perpetrators role in all these processes.
Continuing with Fraser’s theory, the second dimension she proposes for justice, which intersects with the moral/social scale presented above, is the geographical scale. While the first one addresses “what” counts in the framing of justice as argued above, the geographical scale addresses “who” counts as a subject of justice (2009: 10). As we live in an increasingly globalizing world, Fraser proposes that trans-territorial issues should be framed by thinking who are victims of transborder injustices. Given the global and transnational nature of sex trafficking, a postwestphalian approach is essential in order to understand the injustices emerging from the sex trade, but also to recognize its victims as transnational communities of risk.
In this sense, the postwestphalian frame to justice becomes most useful in the articulation of a media justice framework in this study. Like Fraser points out, communications are increasingly expanding through deterritorialize cyberspaces through global mass media. Thus, discourses concerning and impacting women who are victims of the sex trade, flow beyond borders and traditional territorial states. Therefore, the reason why the postwestphalian approach becomes crucial is twofold since it concerns both objects of study: the global scope of the sex trade as well as transnational public opinion shaped through international media.
Journalism’s traditional watchdog role, exposing injustices and giving voice to those groups often pushed to the margins of media representations, becomes indispensable in news reporting about the sex trade. Because of this, at the verge between media justice and an increasing transnational mediapolis, questions about media responsibility arise. How can or should media justice be practiced? Through what means could its practice be ensured at a global scale? Authors like Silverstone (2007) and Couldry (2012) have proposed some answers to these long disputed questions in the form of media ethics and responsibility.
For both authors media are powerful social institutions, and as such, they carry great responsibility in providing recognition. This way, for them media communications must be guided by ethical and moral compasses at an individual, collective and institutional level.
Silverstone highlights that media responsibility requires more than principles and procedures for its application, emphasizing the role of individual action to achieve a just mediapolis. He compares regulation to grammar by arguing that while it may address rules of the language, it does not control the ways in which language is spoken and its content (2007:174). Hence, while skeptical towards institutional regulations underlined the importance of ethical obligations. Nonetheless, Couldry (2012) shows skepticism in the formulation of responsibility as an obligation due to the impossibility to oblige such principles. The systematic enforcement of responsibility to achieve media justice in the current global media landscape remains unclear. But neither it is the goal of the present discussion to find an answer to it. However, what becomes unquestionable is jouranlists’ responsibility to listen, tell the truth and give a fair recognition and representation to others.
3. 4 CDA: Gendering the Battleground
As mentioned earlier, discourse is the third key concept in the present study, which will be addressed as both a theoretical concept informed by CDA theory and as object of analysis in the second stage of the study where CDA will be employed as the method of analysis.
Since its inception in the 1980s in the field of linguistics, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and critical discourse studies in general (CDS) have widely developed across disciplines in the social sciences around the globe. Nonetheless, like Krzyżanowski underscores, they have often been misunderstood as merely methodoligical tools of analysis while disregarding how in this case method comes hand in hand with its theoretical foundations (2016: 254). CDA as theoretical model has traditionally brought up questions about processes of critique, power and ideology in society. Specifically, how meaning and knowledge perpetuating these power and ideological dynamics are produced and reproduced in society by language, texts and discourses (Van Dijk, 2003; Fairclough 1989).
This way, discourses are understood across the discipline as the underlying ideas to discover in texts by looking at diverse linguistic and grammatical choices in them (Hansen &
Machin 2013: 117). Although different schools and traditions in CDA approach the study of discourses from different angles, their theoretical and methodological models share some common ground rooted in critical theory. Among this common ground there are three elements specially relevant for the present research.
First, the drive to confront injustice and empower oppressed individuals and social groups. In this case, to confront the injustices emerging from the sex trade and empower its victims, survivors and all other women and girls at risk of sexual violence and exploitation.
Second, CDA is also based on the idea that individuals have unequal access to ways of disseminating their ideas in society, specially through institutions like media (Samaie &
Malmir. 2017:1353). This notion is closely related and complements the processes of (mis) recognition and (under) representation of others in terms of media justice and responsibility (Fraser 2009; Couldry 2012; Silverstone 2007).
Third, at the core of the CDA also lays the ambition to examine how discourses, through linguistic processes, create meaning and knowledge. Because by perpetuating or challenging certain knowledge, discourses shape social relationships of power and dominant ideologies (Hansen and Machin. 2013; Meyer and Wodak. 2001). This third element is also useful in the present research, as I propose it would be insufficient to study how the sex trade is discursively constructed without examining from a feminist perspective the larger misogynistic power abuses and patriarchal ideology intrinsic in it and surrounding it.
Other scholars have also applied a feminist approach to discourse analysis to study news media coverage of violence against women, and they found discourses to normalize hegemonic views of male violence. Friedman and Johnston (2013) for example, explored narratives of blame in broadcast and online news coverage of sex trafficking and found discourses to be mainly driven by official sources who blamed traffickers primarily for the problem while “customers” were blamed less often than their own victims. Berns (2001) found in domestic violence media discourses what she called a “patriarchal resistance”
perspective. By using several strategies, discourses would reframe the problem as human violence by de-gendering the problem, so men are not held accountable, and gendering the blame so women are framed as co-responsible.
I acknowledge in this study that the sex trade is without a doubt a complex and trans- territorial conflict that overlaps with other societal issues like prostitution, rape and domestic violence among others. As a result, defining the specific ideological and power structures that allows it to emerge is a challenging task open to discussion. However, male dominance and violence against women are the two common denominator present in all of the aforementioned issues. Additionally, sex trafficking is unequivocally a gendered issue that commoditizes and exploits women’s bodies for generally male pleasure (Johnston and Friedman 2014). In fact, the number of current victims which is close to 5 million women and girls according to the UN (UNODC 2018; ILO 2017) would not continue to exist and increase without an equally existing and increasing male demand.
In this line of thought, women are enslaved as their bodies are exploited by traffickers as means of production, and raped by men who perceive it as service or product to be consumed. Practices deep rooted in patriarchal ideology and maintained by misogynistic power abuses. In the sex trade, the relationship between power abuse and patriarchal ideology seems specially symbiotic as both coexist as parasites in society by feeding each other through the sexual violence they mutually legitimize against women.
Consequently, in the study of sex trafficking news media coverage, CDA is preferable as it will allow me to investigate how oppression, power abuse and patriarchal ideology are expressed, legitimize or challenged through media discourses. To do so, the present research poses two different but complementing research questions. Research question 4. How are sex trafficking, its victims and perpetrators discursively constructed in the chosen news articles?
and research question 5. Is there anything in this discourses that could be thought to either perpetuate or challenge the misogynistic power abuses and patriarchal ideology in the sex trade?
Because of the power media holds in society as both framing agents (Roosvall and Tegelberg. 2020) as social institutions (Silverstone. 2007), and its potential to shape people's attitudes and opinions (Sobel. 2014) it is both meaningful and consequential to rise questions about how media discourses are creating meaning and addressing power relations in the sex trade. By critically studying these discourses I hope to encourage future studies to apply feminist views when addressing sexual exploitation and to contribute to find ways to achieve transformative social change.
4. Materials and Methods
The empirical material considered for this study consists of online articles of diverse genres (news reports, features, editorial/opinions etc) published by two major international newspapers: The Guardian and The New York Times. Several factors were considered when choosing these two newspapers, including geographical scope, scale of production and circulation as well as readership reach, material availability and language. This way, significant similarities between these two newspapers were taken into consideration.
Let's first focus on the geographical scope, circulation and scale of production of the chosen newspapers. Although The Guardian -a British daily newspaper- and The New York Times -an American newspaper based in New York- are national newspapers per se, they both have achieved international scope, circulation and reputation. They both have a “World News” section dedicated to global news, featuring first in both websites. Additionally, The Guardian’s main online edition is its International Edition, while it also has UK, US and Australia editions for more national oriented content. Meanwhile, The New York Times has one main edition but it offers a Spanish-language and Chinese-language version of its online edition with more content specifically targeted for Spanish and Chinese speaking readers.
These traits support the argument that both newspapers can be considered
“international” as much as national: they focus on global news, while their digital online editions also allow a high international circulation of their content as well as a global readership. Moreover, like Leuven and Berglez argue, it is also possible to find global reporting in national and international news media as the can actively internconnect the local with the global (2015).
Furthermore, The Guardian and The New York Times have also proved to be interested in developing an international scale of production by opening newsrooms outside of their respective countries, like in France and China, as well as by working with a vast amount of foreign correspondents across nations. Language is another key factor involved in the selection process of the news outlets. Because of the methods employed in the research relying so much in language, it was decided that all materials under analysis needed to be in the same language.
Due to my language skills and the several reasons motivated above, English was the chosen language. Subsequently, only newspapers with English as their primary publishing language were considered. Selecting The Guardian and the NYT is also a decision grounded on the present study’s framework and object of analysis. Firstly, both newspapers are known for taking media responsibility and media justice seriously, for example by often reporting diverse cases of abuses and misuses of power. Thus it is interesting to study what their reporting on sex trafficking says in terms of media justice and journalistic responsibility.
Furthermore, their level of visibility, international readership and potential to shape opinions as mainstream international news outlets, translate into greater responsibility when it comes to media recognition and representations of others.
Secondly, as already established, the global aspect of the sex trade and media justice are elements of interest in this study. Since there are no recognized global newspapers as opposed to TV broadcasters, The Guardian and New York Times are effective alternatives when it comes to global news reporting. In this case, to study what their news reporting of the sex trade can tell us about global discourses on the sex trade. Having explained why I chose these two news outlets, I move on to argue the reasoning behind the selection of online articles as my main material for this study.
Material availability was a key factor. During a preliminary search at the initial stage of this study it seemed difficult to find sex trafficking news reporting in traditional media like television. Material availability conditioned by newspapers’ ideological alignment is another reason why online articles published by The Guardian and The New York Times were chosen.
During the mentioned preliminary search it was difficult to find articles about the sex trade in conservative and more national newspapers.
While this is a meaningful finding itself, it did not correspond with the main aim of studying coverage content and discourses since to do so there needs to be a reasonable amount of articles in the sample. This way, The Guardian and The New York Times, whose reporting and readership share a common space within political and cultural progressivism, seemed to have a bigger interest on the topic.
In this sense, the fact that both share similar ideological stances is an intentional choice since this research does not aim to compare reporting between newspapers. Instead the comparative element in this study aims to trace differences, similarities and trends across international news media coverage and discourses on the sex trade.
Specifically, before, during and after the Epstein scandal in order to see if the introduction of the case into public discourse could be reflected in the media reporting on the larger issue of sex trafficking. In sum, by considering articles across editions, sections and genres from two main international newspapers, this study aims to provide a rich and ample set of materials for analysis. Lastly, limitations concerning the materials are acknowledge and further explained later in the 4.5 Limitations, Reliability, Validity subsection.
4.1 Research Design
The methodological procedure designed for the present study case is an explanatory sequential mixed method design. As explained by Creswell (2017), this approach involves a two-stage data collection. First, quantitative data is collected in the first level analysis, which in this research is achieved through a quantitative content analysis, and then uses these results to construct the second qualitative level of analysis. In this case, a critical discourse analysis is employed. The goal is not only to help understand some of the quantitative results, but also to provide more depth and insight into the results and subsequent questions arising from them.
This way, this study has designed both stages of analysis with two methods that complement each other. The quantitative content analysis will allow: (i) to study the amount of media attention the sex trade receives in the context of a high profile sex trafficking case, (ii) to analyze shifts and trends of different elements in the news coverage, (iii) and it will allow to conduct a strategic sampling later for the CDA based on the results emerging from it.
While the content analysis will allow to track trends in a systematic and reliable that a qualitative method can´t provide, the CDA will enable to examine deeper meanings in sex trafficking news articles that a quantitative method alone wouldn't allow. Thus the CDA will allow to: (i) study how the sex trade, victims and perpetrators are discursively constructed in news media, (ii) and how these discourses express the misogynistic power abuses and patriarchal ideology inherent in the sex trade.
Following this section, the section begins by presenting the quantitative content analysis sampling and coding procedure. Then, it it motivates the sampling process for the CDA and the analytical tools employed to study the sample. Lastly, limitations, reliability, and validity issues are addressed.
4.2. Quantitative Content Analysis
4.2.1 Sampling Procedure
Articles published by The Guardian and The New York Times were retrieved from LexisNexis Academic database. The main search term used in this study included the word
“sex” with any variation of the word “traffick” (trafficking, trafficked, trafficker). The initial goal was to monitor articles published before, during and after the scandal, in a one year time period. However, a sample contemplating articles published during an overall of 365 days was materially unmanageable for this research. Therefore, a choice was made to focus on three time periods of 2 months each in a one year time period. Each of the three periods was design to correspond with different events that could define the time before, during and after the Epstein scandal. Epstein was arrested in July 6, 2019, and the case against him was closed weeks after his death in August 10, 2019, hence July and August were the months selected for the “during the case” time period. Then January and February 2019 was set as the first time period, corresponding to “before the case” while January and February 2020 were selected for the last and third period as “after the case”.
1. First Period: January 1st 2019 - February 28th 2019. This search resulted in 135 articles.
2. Second Period: July 1st 2019 - August 31st 2019. This search resulted in 464 articles.
3. Third period: January 1st 2020 - February 29th 2020. This search resulted in 165 articles.
The preliminary result from the three time periods combined was a total of 764 news articles. Then, some articles were removed or kept from the preliminary sample for further coding following this criteria:
1. Only those articles that focus on sex trafficking as the main theme will be coded further while those that only mention or discuss it as a secondary topic will be discarded from the sample. In order to determine which articles addressed sex trafficking as the main theme, as opposed to those were it is only mentioned/discussed, all of the following criteria must be fulfilled:
1.1 The news article’s story mainly revolves around one or more aspects involved in sex trafficking.
1.2 At least one of the following terms must appear in the headline or byline or lead:
-Sex
-Traffick /trafficking -Exploitation
-Slavery
-Sex + traffick /trafficking/exploitation /slavery -Human + traffick/trafficking/exploitation/slavery -Trafficker and/or trafficker’s name
-Victim and/or victim’s name -Sexual abuse/assault
-Rape/raped -Justice
2. Articles containing a coincidental combination of the search terms that are
inconsistent with the notion of sex trafficking following the United Nations definition are excluded from the sample.
3. News briefs, movie and theater reviews are excluded from the sample.
4. Duplicated articles are also excluded from the sample.
4.1 Articles that are copies from previous articles with different titles but with more than a 90% coincidence in content based on lexis nexus tools are also considered to be duplicated articles and therefore excluded from the sample.
