Linguistic analysis of suspected child sexual offenders’ interactions in a dark web image exchange chatroom
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19535658 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Emily Chiang (0000-0002-0216-1719, Turing Institute), Dong Nguyen (0000-0002-6062-3117, Turing Institute), Amanda Towler (Turing Institute), Mark Haas (0000-0002-7181-4664, Turing Institute), J Grieve (0000-0003-3630-7349, Turing Institute) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 1-33 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-21 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Speech Language and the Law (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1748-8885 • E-ISSN: 1748-8893 |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1558/ijsll.41446 |
| OpenAlex | W3156984408 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 9 |
Child sexual offenders convene in dark web spaces to exchange indecent imagery, advice and support. In response, law enforcement agencies deploy undercover agents to pose as offenders online to gather intelligence on these offending communities. Currently, however, little is known about how offenders interact online, which raises significant questions around how undercover officers should ‘authentically’ portray the persona of a child sexual offender. This article presents the first linguistic description of authentic offender–offender interactions taking place on a dark web image exchange chatroom. Using move analysis, we analyse chatroom users’ rhetorical strategies. We then model the move sequences of different users and user types using Markov chains, to make comparisons between their linguistic behaviours. We find the predominant moves characterising this chatroom are Offering Indecent Images, Greetings, Image Appreciation, General Rapport and Image Discussion, and that rhetorical strategies differ between users of different levels of offending and dark web image-sharing experience
Internet privacy · Law enforcement · Linguistics · Online forum · Political science · Rhetorical question · Authorship Attribution and Profiling · Computer Science · Law · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Social Psychology · Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment
Child sexual abuse
Strengthening move analysis methodology towards bridging the function-form gap
Assuming Identities Online
Investigators using the Internet to apprehend sex offenders
An Integrated Theory of the Etiology of Sexual Offending
Current Responses to Sexual Grooming
Was this analysis helpful? A genre analysis of the Amazon.com discourse community and its “most helpful” product reviews
Criminal Justice Act
Liking and hyperlinking
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |