Leveraging Media to Spread Awareness of Human Trafficking
Originally written as a plan for action for the purpose of civic engagement, this analytical essay looks at how we can implement media practices to raise awareness for human trafficking victims.
I. Issue
The issue at hand is the lack of relevant knowledge of human trafficking and how it occurs for a young audience. There are many misconceptions about how human trafficking begins, warning signs in online relationships, warning signs in others, and types of human trafficking.
II. Persistence of Issue
There are many socioeconomic layers involved in this issue, there is not just one cause. Many causes are out of the control of private institutions or movements. At a local level, though, this issue has persisted due to the consistent lack of “keeping up” with how traffickers use technology to facilitate trafficking. Relevant materials are not being delivered in relevant ways. One could assume it is a lack of rhetorical implementation generally. I once had a friend in middle school who had been communicating with a trafficker online for 8 months. She assumed that because he was so consistent, that he could be trusted. Her idea of human trafficking was that it only happened through kidnapping or drugs. In her instance, she had outdated information about trafficking that put her life in danger.
III. Rhetorical Theory
I speculate that in past campaigns, a lack of identification opportunities between rhetor and audience has caused the information to not be remembered or shared. For example, the primary resources on human trafficking data, both numerical and empirical, have been from government sources and list absurd identification markers that do not allow for the audience to resonate with the information, or disseminate the information with others. This entire plan of action hinges on the principles of Burkean identification – the idea that if my audience can identify with the information, they will attach themselves to it and implement it. This takes us a step outward - has a lack of information implementation been causing human trafficking to perpetuate? I would say yes. There is relevant information regarding human trafficking, but it has not been identifiable enough to be deemed “useful” by the audience. People cannot help but use “life or death” information. Only ignorant people choose not to heed crucial advice. Assuming our audience does not want to be trafficked, I cannot conclude that the issue at hand is not a lack of heeding advice about trafficking. The issue is that the data has not proven to be worthy of implementation.
Burkean identification is an invention model that prioritizes creating informational “ties” between your words, and the words of your audience. From the Sample of Action that has been turned in, you see that there is a video that discusses dangers to look for in online dating. Online dating is a highly identifiable topic within my target audience.
Alongside solving the issue of rhetorical identification, this current strategy uses principles of rhetorical velocity and pathos appeals to engage an audience. Rhetorical velocity and pathos are two main components of viral online material. Let me be clear, though. The goal is not to produce “viral” videos about human trafficking. To assume that viral information is useful information is a misconception about the internet. Algorithms and information bubbles prevent posts from being universally viral. I do not want this content to reach a certain niche. I want it to reach an audience.
Nevertheless, this content will utilize tenets of rhetorical velocity by considering these questions:
How will this material be delivered?
Who is interested?
What is the life cycle of a TikTok video?
How do I expect people to disseminate this information?
What genres could arise from this event?
Asking these questions in the invention process will solve a key issue in human trafficking’s rhetoric: lack of sustainability, information relevance, audience targeting, and information ramifications.
IV. Project Design
Though simple, this project would build off of high-volume applications such as Instagram or TikTok, and it would be a series of informative videos with strategic and dense information about relevant ways that traffickers lure women. The benefit of using a social media app and not a software like Teachable or Canvas is that it is outward facing, meaning, it is discoverable by the free web. This increases the likelihood of effective information dissemination. Video topics contain but are not restricted to:
What do human traffickers' texts sound like?
What is the loverboy method?
If I think a friend is being trafficked, what do I do?
How relevant is human trafficking?
How to recognize trafficking patterns in myself?
How to recognize trafficking patterns in others?
The constraints of this project are: 16:9 aspect ratio videos for mobile devices, short captions, 2 minute or less videos with heavy text and audio. Algorithms look for just a few things to make videos popular. It looks for text to send to a database, it looks at video quality, how the audience is responding, and watch time of the video. Even if this page is sponsored by local pages such as UCF Police Department or Orlando Homeland Safety, our local audience could be armed with better information.
V. Timeline
The expected time to get ample information out would be around a semester, or 140 days. The best frequency to post is at least once to twice a day. Assuming this account posts for a semester and then surveys the audience growth, that would be around 140-280 videos. These videos could be original content, “duets” or “remixes” of other videos, or interviews.
