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LexisNexis is an internationally renowned company that specialises in providing research and information for legal and corporate clients. It is especially popular amongst law students, who routinely use its user-friendly search engines to write assignments and briefs. While these search engines can be an invaluable source of information, they have also unfortunately been put to use to support sensationalism, myth-making, and poor ‘research’.
This is because LexisNexis recently sponsored the publication of a new ‘human trafficking awareness index’ (HTA index), which seeks “to analyse the volume of news related to human trafficking” in Africa. This index uses information from their media database to “highlight emerging trends and patterns of awareness within and across national borders”, and attempts to produce insights that will enable anti-trafficking activists “to monitor and drive the anti-trafficking agenda”.
