Local news plays an important role in providing communities the information needed to address problems. This qualitative study employed framing theory to examine human trafficking coverage in South Carolina newspapers, TV, and radio outlets to understand how well local news coverage equipped communities to solve this local issue. We found that local outlets’ use of national and state coverage of high-profile cases undermined the potential to recognize and address trafficking in one’s own community. Yet, local news provided more ways for audiences to act, signaling potential for outlets to aid in community problem-solving if they produced more local, original content.

Local news media have unique responsibilities toward the communities they serve. In particular, they should help facilitate democratic practices, warn the community about threats, and to provide enough information to equip communities to address problems (Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, 2009). By all accounts, however, local news production has declined precipitously, with fewer journalists producing local news and fewer communities having access to news about their immediate surroundings (Local Journalism Index, 2025; Metzger, 2025). These declines have made it more difficult for communities to find out about important issues, including pollution, political scandals, and even who their representatives are (Hayes, 2025; Hayes & Lawless, 2021; Wang et al., 2025). When the main source of local news in a town disappears, residents further feel less connected to their communities and less community pride (Mathews, 2022), which could affect their interest and ability to solve problems. But problems and potential threats to communities do not disappear or decline when local journalism does. One such problem that affects all communities is human trafficking, the exploitation of individuals for sex or labor using force, fraud, or coercion  (State Department, 2021).

Since 2000, human trafficking has been prohibited by federal law (Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, 2000); and all 50 states have laws against trafficking, although they vary in scope and enforcement, as well as in the protections they afford victims (NCLS, 2026). Human trafficking is a global phenomenon with local dimensions, providing a valuable test case for community problem-solving. While trafficking can occur anywhere, traffickers operate with an understanding of specific contexts of a local community (Johnstone, 2018), taking advantage of conditions that make trafficking more likely (Henderson, 2019), such as tourist destinations, highway rest stops, and upheaval caused by political instability and natural disasters (Hoogesteyn et al., 2024). Furthermore, community-specific responses harness strengths for more effective coordination to fight trafficking and provide aid to victims (Alejano-Steele et al., 2024). Whereas the impacts of human trafficking are experienced most profoundly by its victims, the well-being of communities is also impacted by trafficking, which can strain police and public health resources, and encourage or intensify organized crime and illicit economies. Trafficking is a crime that “touches every layer of local infrastructure” and its economic effects are felt throughout a community (Safe House Project, 2025). The presence of trafficking in a community may further be indicative of systemic issues, such as poverty, food scarcity, homelessness, racism, or corruption (Henderson, 2019)—issues that have long been of concern to journalism.

News is a primary way that the public learn about issues like trafficking, and how the issue is framed in coverage can shape public understanding and response to the issue. Therefore, this study examined news frames in coverage of labor and sex trafficking published by local news outlets. Studies of news coverage of human trafficking have tended to focus on national media (i.e., Gulati, 2011; Sanford, Martinez, & Weitzer, 2016); our site of inquiry is South Carolina, a state with social, economic, and geographic characteristics that lend increased vulnerability to both types of trafficking, and one that has been affected by newspaper closures in ways similar to other states, leaving areas without substantial coverage (Underwood, 2022). We found locally published coverage failed to meet its responsibility to equip communities with the context required to address this pervasive issue, illuminating gaps in local news coverage that could undermine community members’ grasps of the complexities of human trafficking without context about what causes trafficking, the effects on individuals and communities, and potential solutions outside of law enforcement, leaving them ill-equipped to engage leaders to effectively address the problem. We argue ultimately that although local news outlets did publish news about trafficking, coverage failed to fulfill the information needs of South Carolina communities regarding a pernicious problem.

This study and its implications emphasize the interconnectedness of local news and community well-being. In the following section, we trace the role of local news in community problem-solving, situate human trafficking as a local problem, provide detailed rationale for South Carolina as the site of analysis, and synthesize studies of news framing in coverage of trafficking.

Literature Review

The role of local news in community problem-solving
To function effectively, information about the community must be available, and community members must engage with the information: “Informed communities can effectively coordinate activities, achieve public accountability, solve problems, and create connections” (Knight Commission, 2009; p. xiv). Healthy information flow in a community further requires “original and verified reporting” (Knight Commission, 2009, p. xv). One way journalism does this is through coverage alerting the community to problems and risks, one of eight information needs deemed essential for communities to function (Friedland, 2023). Citizens must be able to discuss problems they face and take part in finding solutions—an essential part of democracy. They could conceivably help address problems that are not receiving media attention if they have life experience with them, but other members of the community require media to help fill in gaps (Friedland, 2001). Local news can provide an understanding of local issues, shared even among those at opposite ends of the political spectrum (Wenzel, 2018). Indeed, the most involved and connected in communities tend to be avid local news consumers (Barthel et al., 2016). Yet meeting information needs is a tall order for local outlets, which tend to have smaller staffs and budgets than national news organizations and have faced unprecedented cuts in the past decade (Hayes & Lawless, 2021).

Evidence suggests that news outlet closures decrease community members’ civic and political engagement (Shaker, 2014), making them less likely to be able to address issues of concern. Even before the shrinkage, evidence suggests that news coverage did not always help solve societal problems but instead privileged the status quo (Usher, 2021). It follows, then, that for local news coverage to be of benefit to community problem-solving, it must go beyond mere existence and provide particular context. For example, thematic coverage that includes context and interconnection of societal problems is considered more conducive to problem-solving than event-centered, episodic coverage. “The portrayal of recurring issues as unrelated events prevents the public from cumulating the evidence toward any logical, ultimate consequence” (Iyengar, 1991, p. 143).

Scholars have studied news framing to understand whether coverage of community problems prioritized problem-solving through its definition of the problem, causes of the problem, moral evaluation, and/or treatment possibilities (Entman, 1993). Sometimes, local news coverage has failed to do so. In a study of local news framing of community risk, a community’s growing petrochemical industry was framed as a vital source of the region’s economic success rather than a source of potential environmental disaster, despite multiple industrial accidents (Castelló, 2010). A study of news coverage on systemic problems, including poverty, found that outlets failed to provide adequate information for readers to act, potentially fostering apathy (Kensicki, 2004). Most stories on Philadelphia TV news about gun violence failed to provide enough information for audiences “to prevent gun violence or better deal with its effects” (Midberry & Walters, 2025, p. 15). Another study found that news coverage on air pollution focused mostly on threat at the expense of potential solutions (Ramondt & Ramirez, 2020). Yet local news coverage does have the potential to help communities understand and respond to problems close to home when it provides its audience with contextual depth. In covering the Jena Six controversy, a racially charged assault case in Louisiana, newspapers used thematic framing more often than episodic, with local outlets framing the event as more than an isolated crime. Including context and causal factors underlying the crime “may have opened a window for deeper discussions on issues of race and societal change” (Holt & Major, 2010, p. 593).

Human trafficking as a local problem

Although a global issue, human trafficking is also a local problem that takes many forms, each with “its own business model, trafficker profiles, recruitment strategies, victim profiles, and methods of control that facilitate human trafficking” (Polaris Project, 2017, p. 5). Trafficking occurs in multiple settings, including private homes, hotels, health and beauty services, bars and restaurants, farms, and construction, to name a few. Populous locations tend to be better equipped to identify trafficking and intervene (Freedom Network, 2025). Rural communities, on the other hand, create vulnerabilities due to isolation (and corresponding lack of detection), fewer employment opportunities, and a lack of services. Immigrants who arrive to rural communities as part of the United States’ H-2 visa program—forestry and seasonal agricultural workers, for example—have been subjected to abuse that rises to the level of human trafficking (Garrison et al., 2015). The economic principle of supply and demand for cheap goods and commercial sex, paired with the low risk of punishment or legal consequence, incentivizes the exploitation of individuals. “Human trafficking is fueled by a high reward, low risk dynamic,” wrote Gould (2017, para. 6).
There is no prototypical trafficking victim (Hume & Sidun, 2017), yet certain groups are more vulnerable than others. Knowing who is most vulnerable aids productive allocation of resources. Multiple studies have found disproportionately higher sex trafficking victimization of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), sexual and gender minorities, and people with disabilities (Nichols & Preble, 2025). Groups at exceptionally high risk for poverty, homelessness, and sexual violence are likewise at risk of becoming trafficked (Farley et al., 2011). Girls and women are more likely to be in forced sexual exploitation and domestic work, while men and boys are disproportionately represented in other economic activities (ILO, 2014). Historic and intergenerational trauma are additional risk factors for human trafficking (Tibaduiza et al., 2025).
Traffickers, who may act as individuals or as part of an organized criminal enterprise, identify and exploit existing vulnerabilities, such as homelessness, poverty, addiction, and prior abuse or neglect. Involvement in the child welfare system, recent migration, or relocation, are other significant risk factors (Human Trafficking Collaborative, 2021). A trafficker may pose as a potential romantic partner to lure a victim into commercial sex (Johnston & Friedman, 2019); provide an unhoused individual with food and shelter, then demand “repayment” through unpaid labor (US Department of Justice, 2023); or entrap an immigrant with false promises of work and security, for example. Traffickers control their victims through subtle and overt means; coercion can be psychological and/or physical. Service providers and scholars have identified a trafficker-substance use dynamic, in which traffickers take advantage of a person’s existing substance-use disorder or facilitate addiction to coerce labor or sex (Koegler et al., 2022). News coverage documenting the range of traffickers’ methods could help potential victims recognize and resist them.

South Carolina and human trafficking

South Carolina offers a compelling location to examine media coverage of trafficking. The state’s media ecosystem, established anti-trafficking infrastructure, and social and economic characteristics create conditions that increase vulnerabilities while constraining public awareness and institutional responses.
South Carolina’s news media ecosystem has faced significant challenges in recent years, mirroring constrictions and closures nationwide. The number of newspapers has declined in the past two decades, with 10 newspapers closing during the COVID-19 pandemic alone (Underwood, 2022), so that by 2025, South Carolina had only 72 newspapers (Metzger, 2025). The geographic distribution of news outlets reveals concerning gaps in coverage. Out of 46 counties, three counties had zero news outlets, and 24 had only one news outlets (Metzger, 2025). South Carolina is home to the most populous county without at least one local journalist covering the area and is ranked 43rd in the number of local journalist equivalents (Local Journalist Index, 2025). This pattern of limited news access is particularly pronounced in the state’s rural and economically disadvantaged communities, where geographic isolation and resource constraints have long affected information access. Without local news outlets, residents of the state lack geographically specific coverage of important news and information, a problem that could disproportionately affect communities most vulnerable to human trafficking.

The state’s anti-trafficking efforts are centered on the South Carolina Human Trafficking Task Force, which aligns with a model that leverages partnerships between law enforcement, prosecutors, service providers, mental health professionals, labor professionals, and other stakeholders at the local, state, and federal levels. Over 50 such task forces at the city, county, and state levels were funded by the federal government in 2023 (NORC, 2023).

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigated 305 human trafficking cases from counties across the state in 2023 and 2024. In total, 43% of all cases involved sex trafficking, while 42% involved labor trafficking, and 8% involved both forms. (SC Human Trafficking Task Force, 2023; Office of the SC Attorney General, 2024). Although differences in detection capabilities, reporting mechanisms, and law enforcement priorities between states can impact statistics and create interpretative challenges, available data from neighboring states provides some context. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which compiles information reported by callers, South Carolina recorded 64 trafficking situations involving 111 potential victims in 2023. During the same period, neighboring states reported varying levels of trafficking: Florida documented 680 calls involving 1,172 potential victims, North Carolina documented 235 calls involving 394 potential victims, and Georgia documented 263 calls involving 499 potential victims (National Human Trafficking Hotline, undated). While population differences account for much of this variation, differences in transportation networks, reporting systems, or labor-specific needs may also explain disparities. Since human trafficking is more likely to be underreported in rural areas, South Carolina’s rate is likely higher than available data suggest. South Carolina has been relatively successful in securing funds for its efforts, with the legislature allocating $1.7 million in recurring funds and a $6.5 million appropriation in 2024 (South Carolina Attorney General, 2024).

South Carolina’s social, economic, and geographic characteristics create structural conditions that increase vulnerability to trafficking. South Carolina’s tourist destinations and interstate highway network create conditions that are conducive to trafficking operations. The I-95 corridor passes through the state’s most rural and diverse areas, where approximately 21% of residents live below the federal poverty line (Mandelbaum et al., 2022). The state’s position between major metropolitan areas allows traffickers to strategically use transportation routes to move victims between exploitation sites. Rural isolation is another risk factor for human trafficking. Out of 46 counties across the state, 22 have a population below 50,000, which the United States Census Bureau defines as “rural” (U.S. Census, 2024). Rural areas have fewer employment opportunities and limited access to social services, while geographic isolation itself can allow trafficking activities to go undetected. Rural counties in South Carolina have higher socioeconomic vulnerability scores relative to urban and suburban counties (Mandelbaum et al., 2022), indicating fewer protective factors against trafficking and other harms.

Constriction of local news media intensifies rural counties’ vulnerabilities by creating information gaps where trafficking coverage is most needed. Poverty, unemployment, and seasonal employment cycles lead to economic precarity, which makes populations susceptible to human trafficking. Migrant workers are uniquely vulnerable due to language barriers, cultural isolation, and a lack of familiarity with legal protections. Traffickers capitalize on these vulnerabilities through debt bondage mechanisms, confiscating personal documents, and threatening deportation to maintain control over victims (Polaris Project, 2019).

Framing in news coverage of human trafficking

Multiple studies have applied framing theory to identify patterns in coverage and changes over time. News coverage has not typically increased public understanding and holistic policy solutions about trafficking, yet “media framings of human trafficking are consequential for countering it more effectively” (Foot, 2024, p. 316). News coverage generally tends to frame human trafficking episodically as singular crime events (Gulati 2011; Johnston et al., 2015) delinked from broader themes such as human rights (Demeke, 2024), immigration (Bonilla, 2018), or public health (Sprang et al., 2022). Although trafficking takes many forms, news coverage is dominated by sex trafficking, to the exclusion of forced labor. The “dominant [media] narrative does not reflect the full reality and diversity of human trafficking” (D’Adamo & Albright, 2017, p. 364).
Furthermore, when news coverage identifies the causes, consequences, and solutions of trafficking, it struggles to do so in a comprehensive manner.

In a study of news frames in coverage of human trafficking, Gulati (2011) analyzed The New York Times and The Washington Post coverage from 1980 to 2006, noting that “the news media mostly echo the narratives presented by the major participants in the policy process and, thus, help support the dominant views” (p. 367). The crime frame was the narrative used most often to indicate the cause of trafficking, and more than half did not mention a solution to the problem of trafficking. For those that did, the most cited solution was enhanced law enforcement (Gulati, 2011). In a framing study on sex trafficking coverage in 140 U.S. news outlets, Johnston et al. (2015), found a similar emphasis on official sources and law-and-order solutions. Sex trafficking coverage was most often framed episodically as individual cases or isolated events to be handled by police and the courts. News coverage rarely took up the root causes of trafficking, and more than half of the stories analyzed had no discussion of remedies. Moreover, cases focused on those involving women and girls, to the neglect of boys, men, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. News frames often mimic official positions on trafficking, with outlets unable to convey the complexity of trafficking, and official responses inadequate to eradicate trafficking (Farrell & Fahy, 2009).

Consequences of trafficking impact the individual trafficking victim, and groups who are at highest risk of exploitation. The impact is also felt at the community level, undermining safety, stability, public health, and economic prosperity. Indeed, “all of society suffers, as well as principles of democratic freedom, principles of democratic society, rule of law and human rights” (McCormack, 2011). Many anti-trafficking initiatives involve more policing and harsher penalties for traffickers, but as understandings of trafficking increase, so too, do calls for solutions not solely reliant on the criminal justice system (Alejano-Steele, et al., 2024, p. 406). “Ending human trafficking requires engagement in interrupting the factors that increase vulnerability to human trafficking, including racism and ethnic bias,” argue Bryant-Davis and Tummala-Narra (2017, p. 152). Cockbain and Bowers (2019) call for “finely-targeted responses” (p. 9) based on the local environment and contingencies of specific trafficking types. “A one-size-fits-all approach developed primarily to combat the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation is insufficient” (p. 27).

Although media coverage is often cited as an obstacle to anti-trafficking efforts because of its tendency to favor sensationalized accounts and its preoccupation with sex trafficking over other forms of human trafficking, media can identify the causes and consequences of trafficking, and explore possible solutions. As Foot (2024) argued, “media framings of human trafficking are consequential for countering it more effectively” (p. 316). As such, news reporting on trafficking can boast successes, as Gulati (2011) observed, investigative journalism was more likely to reject dominant policy views and “analyz[e] stories from a broader and more comprehensive perspective” (p. 368). Examples of award-winning newsroom initiatives include an Associated Press exposé on labor trafficking in Southeast Asia’s fishing industry (Associated Press, 2016); a Washington Post series on child sex trafficking (Eastman, 2022), and the Miami Herald’s prolonged reporting of the Jeffrey Epstein case (Ocasio, 2020). Such examples engage with the complexity of trafficking to report its root causes and effects, using a broad range of sources and reporting techniques, but require a commitment of resources that increasingly eludes newsrooms.

Framing as an effective framework to analyze news

Analyzing news frames is one way to understand the usefulness of news stories in helping communities solve problems. By highlighting certain information in news articles, frames “define problems,” “diagnose causes,” “make moral judgments,” and “suggest remedies” for those problems, determining whether people understand and remember a problem, as well as whether they act on it (Entman, 1993, p. 52). Framing for journalists is a tool for making complex issues more comprehensible to audiences (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007) by accessing constructs audiences already hold, often shared across the culture (Tewksbury & Scheufele, 2020).

At the same time, interest groups and policymakers can impact the amount of coverage and the nature of the messages involved (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). Previous framing studies of news coverage of trafficking have found a tendency toward episodic coverage of individual cases that neglect the complex issues involved with trafficking (Gulati, 2011; Johnston et al., 2015), with coverage gaining contextual depth and source diversity as journalists became more knowledgeable about trafficking (Sobel et al., 2019). Providing context and a thorough explanation of issues is considered one way to identify quality in journalism. A story can be considered to provide depth in coverage of an issue if, for example, stories go beyond episodic event coverage, include multiple viewpoints, and were the result of enterprise reporting by the journalists rather than a pre-arranged event such as a press conference or an announcement by official sources such as a press release (Lacy & Rosenstiel, 2015).

Research questions

This study posed the following research questions:

RQ1: How did local news outlets in South Carolina frame the problem of human trafficking in the coverage they published for local audiences?
RQ2: Based on previous research on community information needs, how well did news coverage published by local news outlets equip audiences to address trafficking in their communities?

Method

To answer these questions, this qualitative content analysis used framing theory to examine stories about trafficking in South Carolina newspapers and broadcast stations over a 20-month period in 2023 and 2024.

Data collection

Print and digital stories were collected via America’s News (NewsBank) database using the search terms, “human trafficking” or “sex trafficking” or “labor trafficking.” The search was filtered by location (South Carolina), type of source (newspaper, which included selected digital-only stories) and date range (January 1, 2023–August 31, 2024, when coding and analysis began). A total of 393 newspaper stories were collected for analysis (174 stories from 2023, and 219 from 2024).

No digital-native news outlets operated in the state at the time of analysis (Institute for Nonprofit News, n.d.; LION Publishers, n.d.).

Local broadcast stations were selected by identifying the top stations in South Carolina’s four local news markets. The following stations were included in our data collection: South Carolina Public Radio, WISTV (Columbia), WCSC-TV (Charleston), and WMBF (Myrtle Beach-Florence). Broadcast stories for the same period were collected using the search terms “human trafficking or “sex trafficking” or “labor trafficking.” A total of 163 broadcast stories were collected for analysis (65 stories from 2023, and 98 from 2024). After removing duplicates, a total of 500 stories remained.

We organized the 500 stories in a spreadsheet by outlet name, publication date, headline, and byline. We read each story to determine whether trafficking was the focus of the story. A story for which a reporter attended the opening of a new shelter for trafficking survivors and interviewed stakeholders was considered to have trafficking as its focus. Items with incidental mentions of trafficking, such as a simple calendar listing of speaker events at a local library, were eliminated from our analysis. Of the 500 stories collected for analysis, trafficking was the focus of approximately half (251). These stories, published in South Carolina news outlets, became the sample for analysis (Table 1).

Table 1. News Story Distribution by Outlet

Coverage about trafficking, even if not local to a community, could provide helpful context about trafficking as a societal problem that audiences could then use to address the problem in their own community. For this reason, our analysis includes local and nonlocal stories to address this research question. However, because solutions to trafficking are dependent on local contexts, and because institutional contexts are relevant to framing decisions (Entman, 1993; Reese & Lee, 2012), we wanted to know how many of the 251 stories in our sample constituted local coverage of the issue. We anticipated this distinction would be valuable to our interpretation of framing techniques within the corpus.

“Truly local news,” according to Mahone et al. (2019) provides “community members with news and information about, and directly relevant to, their communities (p. 8). In their seminal study of news in 100 U.S. communities, Mahone et al. (2019) used a geographic definition of community, holding that a news story is local if its subject was about an issue or event in the municipality. Following their example, we considered locality as an event or issue within the same county of the publication. We also considered whether stories were original to the news outlet or re-published from another news outlet, deeming stories that were republished to not be local, original stories. These nonlocal, republished stories encompassed coverage published by outlets in other states or communities within the state.

Among the 251 stories in our analysis, 122 were local and original, and 129 were neither local nor original.

Coding for news frames

We returned to the 251 news stories and engaged in a “long preliminary soak” (Hall, 1975, p. 15), a method that allowed us to “examine text with the intention of letting the content speak for itself” (Rodriguez and Blumell, 2014, p. 347). This helped us gain familiarity with the stories as we began the coding process of our framing analysis. Coding for qualitative research involves the systematic organizing of texts to identify patterns. The authors acted as the coders and engaged in an active process of re-reading, revision, and discussion to improve transparency and trustworthiness in the results (Reyes et al., 2021).

We adopted the coding scheme used in Johnston et al.’s (2014, 2015) analyses of frames in U.S. news coverage of sex trafficking. The 251 stories were coded for length, type of story (news, feature, opinion), and what triggered the story, or “what made the issue or event news in the first place” (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2009, p. 2). Story triggers include “an action, event, or editorial decision,” and are evident in a story’s narrative and sourcing (Pew Research Center, 2009). For example, Gulati (2011) found that 60% of articles about trafficking in the New York Times and the Washington Post 1980-2006 were triggered by “some official government action or event.” Among the 605 stories Gulati analyzed, one-fifth were the result of newsroom initiatives (p. 370).

Stories were also analyzed for the type of trafficking featured in the stories, if a definition of trafficking or statistics were provided, and how trafficking persons were described, if at all.
We further coded stories for the presence of episodic and/or thematic frames (Iyengar, 1991) to understand whether human trafficking was reported in broader contexts. Trafficking is a crime, and crime stories, especially, have been found to veer toward episodic (Iyengar, 1991), reporting a specific event without situating it within its broader impacts (Callaghan & Schnell, 2005).

Next, we examined the news stories for context that might have been used to help audiences understand and respond to trafficking. For example, was the issue of trafficking framed in coverage as one related to human rights, public health, or legislation or policy issues, for example? We analyzed the type of sources cited in the stories. Throughout the coding and analysis process, researchers met multiple times to discuss and resolve differences among perspectives and unique cases to prevent the loss of data (Reyes, et al., 2021).

Framing techniques lend power to a communicating text (Entman, 1993, p. 51) and can convey to news audiences the causes, consequences, and solutions to a problem. In this analysis, we used prior studies (Gulati, 2011; Johnston et al., 2014, 2015) to consider the language in news stories about trafficking causes, consequences, and solutions, including whether any information was given to audiences to support victims of trafficking or to take action against trafficking in their communities. We have included counting where it is relevant to increase “the richness of information” in our qualitative analysis (Christou, 2025, p. 3090).

Findings

This study found that the news coverage about trafficking that local news outlets in South Carolina published failed to equip local audiences with the resources to address this pressing social issue. Audiences in South Carolina were more likely to encounter stories that reported human trafficking in a national context, mostly surrounding celebrity cases, rather than contextualizing news about trafficking as a local concern. Trafficking was framed most often as a crime or to a lesser extent, a problem of a lack of awareness, rather than a byproduct of systemic issues such as poverty. When systemic issues were present in the coverage, such as immigration, they were contextualized nationally rather than as a community issue, which could make problem-solving less accessible to audiences. Stories furthermore neglected context useful for addressing the problem of trafficking in communities: the omission of complex causes, effects of trafficking, and potential remedies, groups most affected, and perspectives from community members who are not law enforcement.

As a bright spot, local news provided more context about trafficking than nonlocal coverage did, suggesting the higher potential for locally produced and focused news to help communities solve problems—if the identified gaps were addressed. The local stories with the most depth and content tended to be produced by newspaper outlets, reinforcing concerns about the demise of local newspapers and replicating previous studies that newspapers continue to be a keystone medium in communities (Mahone et al., 2019; Nielsen, 2015; Usher & Hagman, 2025). Furthermore, the disproportionate focus on sex trafficking compared to other forms of trafficking failed to put the state’s trafficking problem in accurate context. These overarching findings are described in detail in the following sections.

Differences between local and nonlocal coverage

We first found that a majority of trafficking coverage provided to communities by local outlets was not, in fact, local. A little more than half of the stories published by local news outlets were not local to the community, meaning they were not produced by the outlet and about a local community. Non-local stories included those produced outside South Carolina, such as the Los Angeles Times; coverage about national and international trafficking cases by wire agencies such as the Associated Press; and stories published by local outlets within South Carolina that had been syndicated to run in newspaper and TV coverage elsewhere in the state that were about trafficking cases from a different community without locally specific context to relate the case to the local community. These findings were consistent with those of Usher and Hagland (2025), who found multiple local outlets would publish the same stories, amplifying their effect.

Remaining open to the possibility that nationally focused stories could provide context about the problem of human trafficking, we included non-local stories in the sample. Yet our analysis found the smaller amount of local original coverage about trafficking was offset not by rich, contextual national or state-level coverage, but by episodic trafficking cases involving celebrities or high-profile crimes, rather than stories reflecting how human trafficking occurs or other contextual information that could help communities address human trafficking.
We also found differences in the local, original news coverage published by media type. The 146 newspaper stories about trafficking surpassed the 105 stories published by broadcast TV and radio, accounting for more than half of stories in both local and nonlocal categories. These findings echo previous accounts that local newspapers, although declining in coverage and number, provide more local coverage than broadcast outlets (Mahone et al., 2019; Usher & Hagland, 2025).

With the exception of an audio story that included as sources a survivor and members of the state’s task force to debunk misconceptions about trafficking in South Carolina, most public radio coverage consisted of stories focused on national high-profile cases that provided little context about human trafficking as a problem outside of those specific cases. TV coverage about trafficking was more locally focused by comparison, but stories captured only a handful of cases in South Carolina as they moved through the judicial system, rather than providing necessary context that would help audiences understand trafficking. Newspapers, too, focused on prominent national and international cases with reprints from other news organizations, but they tended to offer comparably more in-depth coverage on local cases through the use of more sources and more thematic framing rather than episodic.

Disproportionate focus on sex trafficking and high-profile cases
We next sought to understand the type of trafficking presented to audiences in coverage. A disproportionate majority of both local and nonlocal coverage focused on sex trafficking, a finding consistent with previous research (i.e., Johnston et al., 2015; Sobel et al., 2019) showing news coverage tends to fixate on sex trafficking to the neglect of other typologies. When compared to cases in the state of South Carolina, labor trafficking was under-represented, while sex trafficking was over-represented, with 67% of local coverage focusing on sex trafficking, compared to that being the nature of 43% of cases in the state. Conversely, labor trafficking was the focus of just 5% of local coverage, compared to 42% of cases (South Carolina Human Trafficking Task Force, 2023; Office of the South Carolina Attorney General, 2024).
Local and nonlocal coverage alike tended to spotlight high-profile criminal cases of trafficking.

At the national level, the focus was on a handful of cases with celebrity defendants, such as content creator Andrew Tate, WWE head Vince McMahon, and musician Sean “Diddy” Combs, with coverage tracking their cases as they made their way through the justice system. Similarly, at the local level, a handful of cases appeared multiple times as they traversed local courts over 20 months of analysis. These local cases did not involve celebrities but emphasized unusualness in cases involving minors, such as a mother accused of trafficking her children for sex, and traffickers using a popular ride-share service to transport children being trafficked for sex. While trafficking of children is particularly reprehensible, the focus on several high-profile cases involving minors highlighted the absence of more comprehensive coverage of trafficking in communities, and the resource limitations that make such coverage challenging.

Mostly episodic coverage framed trafficking as a crime

We found that the coverage published by local outlets framed trafficking as a crime through the preponderance of episodic news stories focused on new, singular, and routine events as they were announced by arms of the justice system, and a reliance on sources within the justice system and government. Most stories, local and nonlocal, were prompted by an event, such as an arrest, court date, or press conference, rather than enterprise reporting, measured by whether the first few paragraphs of a story mentioned a pre-arranged event or a public announcement of some kind. Out of these events, most were related to law enforcement and the justice system: About 62% of story triggers arose through court cases, police announcements of arrests or charges, and an annual report published by the state attorney general’s office.

The episodic coverage made up nearly 88% of original local stories, considered to be episodic if prompted by a news event. For example, a story reporting the timely arraignment of a person in South Carolina on trafficking charges was episodic if it provided no additional context with which to understand the event or connect it to others (Clifford, 2024). We considered stories thematic if they connected isolated events to broader societal issues, such as a Post and Courier story that explained the complicity and legal liability of the hospitality industry in facilitating trafficking (Paul, 2024). Beyond police reports, original local news stories about trafficking tended to be triggered by organized events held by nonprofit organizations, mostly with short stories that appeared to have been derived from press releases. While this is a common practice to raise awareness about trafficking, this could result in attention and funds going toward organizations that lack financial transparency or efficiency. It was unclear from the stories if organizations had been vetted before publishing.

When stories contextualized human traffic within a broader issue, the largest proportion—37% of local stories and 32% of nonlocal stories—were focused on trafficking as a crime. We found some differences between additional themes in local and nonlocal stories. Original, local news stories included few themes outside of crime, whereas themes such as human rights, immigration, and the combined theme of power, influence, and money, were more likely to emerge in nonlocal stories. The second largest proportion of original, local stories, about 20%, presented trafficking as a problem of awareness. Few stories regarded trafficking as a problem related to public health, human rights, immigration, the foster care system, or poverty. Although trafficking is illegal and undoubtedly should be viewed as a criminal issue, coverage that focused on trafficking as a crime ignored systemic issues related to trafficking. Similarly, focusing on awareness alone omitted the context required to understand the full extent of how trafficking affects the community, including victims. For example, an Index Journal story about the lack of safe house space viewed trafficking through the lens of public awareness (Holdman, 2024).

The selection of voices to include in news coverage can prioritize some perspectives over others and contribute to how a story is framed. In this area, too, perspectives prioritized trafficking as a criminal issue. When stories included sources, they were more likely to be from law enforcement, which half of local stories included, or the government, which nearly half of local stories included, and a majority of nonlocal stories. The state attorney general’s office representatives were quoted in nearly a quarter of original, local stories. Conversely, victims of trafficking were rarely included, nor were regular community members without official titles. Advocacy group representatives and social workers, who would offer perspectives outside of law enforcement, were included slightly more often.

Audiences ill-equipped to solve the problem of trafficking in their communities

Although coverage considered original and local to a community performed better than republished news from outside the community in providing context and ways for audiences to engage, all coverage published by South Carolina outlets fell short of providing adequate information for the community to address trafficking. To address societal problems, community members require contextual information to understand the issue, including the affected individuals and groups, a definition of the problem, as well as the causes, consequences, and potential solutions. Context in local stories was most often about victims, which appeared in 82% of stories. Concerning other types of context, a majority of both national and local stories failed to provide a definition of trafficking or offer data to illuminate the scope of the problem, although local stories were more likely to provide these kinds of information. Local news stories were more likely to provide context in five of the seven areas: a definition, data, ways to take action, remedies, and consequences. However, fewer than half of the local stories included a definition, data, and ways to take action; and nearly half did not provide suggested causes of trafficking, consequences or remedies in news stories. To solve a problem, communities need this vital information.

Context about victims

Victims of trafficking in original, local stories were characterized as children most often (68%), and as female (45%), which fit with majorities of trafficking victims in the state in 2023 and 2024 (South Carolina Human Trafficking Task Force, 2023; Office of the South Carolina Attorney General, 2024), although male and adult victims were underreported, appearing in 5% and 33% of stories, respectively. The full spectrum showing the diversity in groups affected by trafficking was not made evident in news content, with few victims identified by ethnicity or race, nationality, or presence of disability or LGBTQ+ affiliation, although these groups may be at greater risk (Johnston et al., 2015).

Causes and consequences of trafficking

When causes are identified, problems are more readily addressed. Nearly half of stories did not attribute trafficking to any particular cause, consistent with previous studies, although neither did stories blame for their circumstances, an improvement from previous findings (Johnston et al., 2015). When the original, local stories did mention causes, however, they were more likely to blame a lack of public awareness and suggest increased public awareness as a remedy. Lack of awareness indeed makes individuals more vulnerable to trafficking and less likely to recognize and report it. Systemic issues linked to trafficking such as poverty and rural isolation were rarely explored.

Reporting the consequences of trafficking tells audiences the impact and magnitude of the issue; that is, who and what suffers, and how severely. Half of original, local stories did not report consequences from trafficking, consistent with prior studies. In contrast to causes, individual consequences of trafficking in local stories were emphasized, with nearly half of local stories noting harms inflicted by traffickers to control their victims. Some stories recounted these in graphic detail: “He beat them with his fists, pans, plates and handguns until their ears rang, their faces were bruised and misshapen and their mouths were full of loose teeth,” a State reporter cited victim accounts (Clifford, 2024). Other stories acknowledged long-term effects of harm, such as a source in an Aiken Standard story that described trauma as contents of an “invisible suitcase” that survivors carry with them (Moorman, 2023). Impacts to the community were absent in coverage.

Solutions to trafficking and resources to take action

More than half of local stories included one or more solutions to trafficking. About 85% of local stories were episodic and not thematic in nature. Solutions mentioned appeared to correspond to the most common issue frames in South Carolina news coverage of human trafficking: crime and public awareness/education. This overall finding is not surprising, as earlier studies have found that remedies are dependent on story type and frames. The solution cited most often was the development of campaigns for public awareness/education, followed by the passage of new laws or changes to existing ones. Increased punishment for specific groups was mentioned in news coverage–for traffickers and for people who pay for sex, sometimes framed as targeting demand. Some of the solutions directly related to helping victims of trafficking; for example, providing increased housing/shelter space and comprehensive support services. Notably, there were few explicit calls for increased funding for organizations that provide these services. On the other hand, there was more support for funding of state agencies, including police. Other solutions called for improved coordination of efforts among policy, law, and advocacy groups.

At the conclusion of some stories, journalists provided their audience with resources to take action against trafficking, including how to report instances of trafficking and sources where they could learn more about the issue. Local news stories were more likely to provide resources to inform community members how they can address trafficking, suggesting another bright spot for local coverage over national, with 43% of local stories, compared to 11% of nonlocal stories providing audiences with resources for taking action to fight trafficking. When stories offered audiences resources for taking action, the most-often cited resource was the National Human Trafficking Hotline for reporting suspected trafficking and connecting victims to services. The second most-cited resource was the South Carolina Human Trafficking Task Force or regional task forces, followed by South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) or local police.

As public awareness was most often presented as a solution, the only engagement asked of the community was to be vigilant about their own children and to report people who appeared suspicious. The omission of ways to engage other than alerting law enforcement reinforces the overall findings of trafficking presented as a crime and not a societal issue. This distribution is consistent with prior studies of news coverage of trafficking, which have found that consequences and solutions are closely linked with story frames and the sources of knowledge that a story’s author has consulted (Johnston et al., 2015). Although local news content produced by the outlets and not republished, provided slightly more context to help the community solve the problem of trafficking than content they republished from outlets outside the community, framing trafficking as a criminal issue rather than a societal problem with systemic causes and consequences left communities with little information to address trafficking outside of law enforcement.

Discussion

This study found that most news coverage published by South Carolina news outlets framed human trafficking as a crime or celebrity story, not as a complex problem for communities to address, thereby failing to fulfill its responsibility to communities to provide the information necessary to address local problems. This study contributes to literature about local news, providing additional evidence that local news coverage lacks the context necessary to solve community problems (i.e., Castelló, 2010; Kensicki, 2004; Midberry & Walters, 2025; Ramondt & Ramirez, 2020). Coverage about trafficking provided law enforcement-based solutions to the exclusion of intersectional and interprofessional efforts, with adequate information about trafficking missing, such as definitions, who is likely to be trafficked, the causes, consequences, and potential remedies of trafficking. In framing trafficking mostly as an episodic crime story, local news outlets might have been, on the surface, filling the audience’s critical information need to be alerted of threats, but the lack of context and framing hinders community action to address trafficking.

Locally produced news focused on the local community outperformed republished state and national news in providing context about trafficking in more stories and information for the audience to act on, even amid shrinking newsrooms and a lack of additional digital native outlets in the state, suggesting potential for local news to aid in local civic engagement (Holt & Major, 2010; Shaker, 2014), but we argue locally produced stories still did not provide enough information about the issue to help communities address the problem. These findings support earlier research showing local news coverage does not adequately meet people’s information needs (Mahone et al., 2019)—not only were local news audiences deluged with national coverage about high-profile, and not necessarily representative, cases about sex trafficking, but stories about local trafficking cases also replicated the tendency toward sensational cases.

Findings identified an inadequate number of local stories about trafficking for communities to comprehend the problem, as the majority of trafficking-related coverage presented the issue to South Carolina news audiences as an issue existing outside the community. Attributing this fully to the shrinking and closures of local newspapers in the state is beyond the scope of this study; however, based on the majority of duplicated wire and nationally focused stories, locally produced stories would be insufficient to fill the news hole, suggesting the need for more locally focused content. Examining multiple mediums, we found that newspapers—even amid declines measured in the state—provided the bulk of local news stories about trafficking, replicating trends identified in other studies (i.e., Mahone et al., 2019; Usher & Hagland, 2025) and providing further evidence of the medium as a keystone source of local information (Nielsen, 2015). The lack of digital-native outlets in the state could also contribute to the disproportionately national focus of trafficking news, as the presence of these newer outlets have shown promise in addressing newspaper declines (Mahone et al., 2019).

The findings also emphasized the replication of stories by multiple outlets, either focusing on more sensational trafficking cases elsewhere in the state or national celebrity cases. In Usher and Hagland’s (2025) study, this replication helped amplify the rhetoric of an extremist politician. In this study, the amplification meant that a few high-profile cases dominated coverage, which would not help local communities understand trafficking in their own communities. Instead, the content could encourage fear of strangers, providing just two options for addressing trafficking—increased surveillance of children and funding more law enforcement—that came at the expense of locally-specific context such as potential remedies, effects that differ based on circumstances, age, or gender, or the prevalence of familial-based trafficking.

The framing of trafficking as a crime hindered a thorough understanding of trafficking. Similar to previous studies, this study found an overreliance on official sources with a prioritization of government viewpoints (Sanford et al., 2016), suggesting local outlets relied on information provided by official sources, including news releases, that could more efficiently be turned into news content. The overuse of official sourcing created a conduit for official viewpoints, as most sources came from police departments and the office of the state’s Attorney General. The official narrative of the state told was that the crime of trafficking was best addressed by raising public awareness and in turn, increasing rates of reports of suspected trafficking to police.

Framing trafficking as a crime through episodic coverage dilutes the societal causes and the interconnection of social issues like poverty (Iyengar, 1991). Instead of approaching the problem as a societal issue with root causes and consequences, audiences instead were provided details of the most extreme cases with calls for increased supervision of children. While one could argue the news outlets are fulfilling the critical information need of alerting the public to danger, the omission of broader context hinders the public’s ability to address trafficking at the community level. Episodic framing also serves to “preserve the image of public officials” by “divert(ing) attention from societal responsibility” (Iyengar, 1991, p. 137).

This framing, therefore, could hinder local media from fulfilling their promise to the public of holding those in power accountable and providing enough information about societal problems for audiences to respond in productive ways. Thematic coverage, on the other hand, gives audiences more information to act on and the context necessary to understand issues in their community (Damanhoury et al., 2022). The focus on sensational cases that do not reflect the scope of local trafficking could further restrain the community from applying appropriate remedies. Some journalists have turned to solutions-based stories to encourage action on social problems (McIntyre & Lough, 2021), and indeed, stories about trafficking that focused on solutions did make readers feel better than stories that aimed to shock them (McIntyre & Sobel, 2017).

Journalists covering multiple stories on tight deadlines rely on established story angles and forms, and such was the case with the trafficking coverage we examined. Despite the need for efficiency, this practice does not help community members understand trafficking in ways that inspire novel or collaborative solutions. There are, however, some ways to amend and disrupt normative practices to better provide the content, beyond expanding nonexistent reporting resources to this area. For example, to address gaps in trafficking coverage identified in this study, journalists should prioritize thematic framing, forging partnerships with other news organizations to offset resource shortages, and thereby fulfilling ethics guidelines to provide context in news stories (SPJ, 2014), similarly to an effort by The Post and Courier, a newspaper based in Charleston, in which the outlet partners with other news organizations to investigate potential abuses of power, misuse of taxpayer dollars, and reports of misconduct in communities that no longer have access to robust reporting of their own (Harris, 2021; The Post and Courier, 2025). Furthermore, including a diversity of survivors in coverage would show audiences the universality of the problem in their communities, fitting with journalists’ ethical responsibilities to seek out news sources whose voices are not always included (SPJ, 2014).

Engaging with survivor-led organizations would contextualize the reporting in meaningful ways, and encourage framing that focuses more on impact and solutions, and less on trafficking as crime events delinked from broader issues, such as poverty, homelessness and addiction. Providing definitions of trafficking, incorporating the spectrum of trafficking typologies and victims, and linking to previous in-depth stories about trafficking when covering criminal cases as they move through the system would add further context and depth, aiding audiences in better understanding—and ultimately, addressing—the problem.

Conclusion

This study found that locally produced news coverage provided more context about the problem of human trafficking than republished news from outside the community, but overall, very little of the news coverage about trafficking that local news outlets disseminated to South Carolina audiences provided the adequate information and context to fully understand how trafficking affects local communities. Without this knowledge, communities are ill-equipped to address the problem.
Furthermore, framing trafficking as a criminal issue alone, with the only remedy available to support law enforcement efforts overlooks co-existing systemic problems that make communities and individuals more vulnerable to trafficking. We argue that to fully serve critical information needs in a community in a way that helps people act, local news coverage should better equip audiences to address problems such as trafficking in a multitude of ways. These findings supported previous studies finding that trafficking coverage is typically framed as a crime story by news outlets and often omits important context (Napoli, 2017).

Findings also support previous literature in local news research finding a lack of depth in local coverage, and inadequate critical information provided by resource-strapped local outlets (Mahone et al., 2019). Our findings reinforce the need to study the content of local news in depth, specifically, through framing, to understand the gaps in critical information needs to be able to offer clear guidelines when supporting local news.

Limitations of this study include scope and location—including only one state’s coverage allowed for understanding coverage in depth, but it is also not representative of other locations, with varying levels of media availability and infrastructure in the justice system to combat trafficking. Furthermore, trafficking is just one issue affecting local communities; future research should expand to analyzing coverage about other societal issues, which differ by community, to continue to ask how well local news is serving communities to help solve problems, a core function of local news.

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About the Authors

Dr. Andrea Lorenz is an assistant professor at School of Media and Journalism, Kent State University – arlorenz@gmail.com,  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2483-3475

Dr. Barbara G. Friedman, a professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, can be contacted at bfriedman@unc.edu, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9960-0430

Alison Miller, a Ph.D. student at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, can be contacted at ammille7@email.unc.edu, https://orcid.org/0009-0008-8327-2322

This research was financially supported by the South Carolina Human Trafficking Task Force.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to arlorenz@kent.edu.