Human Trafficking Countermeasure Efforts of the Indonesian Government on Social Media

Abstract

During the first half of 2020, news regarding sexual exploitation and child trafficking circulated on the media, both press and digital media. The national police revealed cases of sexual exploitation and prostitution through social media involving minors. This incident indicates that human trafficking activities have taken place on social media. Human trafficking is a multidimensional problem and Indonesia is struggling to counteract this complex issue. Considering the shift in human trafficking recruitment activity that utilizes social media, the government should consider communicating to the public regarding human trafficking through social media as an attempt to eradicate it. Thus, this study aims to investigate and analyse the involved government institutions’ social media contents related to the human trafficking issue. The conventional approach to qualitative content analysis was employed to answer the research questions. The data collection incorporated social media content mining from three of the most accessed social media platforms in Indonesia, namely Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram from January to June 2020. The results indicate that the government institutions’ social media contents consist of two themes, which are the illegal migrant worker issue as well as child trafficking and sexual exploitation issue. The conveyed message in both themes merely reports and publishes the details of the institutions’ current events and activities related to human trafficking without the intention to socialize or disseminate information