Lexical choices of sharers and non-sharers on child sexual abuse material forums
Meike M. de Boer, Willemijn F. L. Heeren, Anton Daser, Colm Gannon, Frederic M. Gnielka, Salla Huikuri, Robert Lehmann, Rebecca Reichel, Thomas Schäfer, Alexander F. Schmidt, Katarzyna Staciwa, ARJAN A. J. BLOKLAND · Applied Corpus Linguistics · 2025
• Although members of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) darknet forums are expected to share CSAM, only a small minority does so. • Users who do not share CSAM compensate this violation of expectations by using more positive, polite, and explicit words. • Users who share CSAM use more words related to the forum and the online world, even before they actually start sharing their first CASM. • Users who share CSAM use numerous words related to law enforcement and (cyber)security. On the dark web, there are forums dedicated to the distribution and discussion of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Although exchanging material is one of the major purposes of such forums, only a small portion of the users share CSAM themselves. Using keyness analysis, we analyzed word frequencies to see which words were unusually frequent for either CSAM sharers or non-sharers. The language of non-sharing members shows more positivity and rapport-building, which could be a way to compensate for not being able to meet the expectation to contribute material to the forum. In addition, they use more sexually explicit language, potentially to prove that they are a genuine part of the community. Sharers, on the other hand, talk more about the forum and the world outside of the forum where their practices are considered illegal. Hence, many words that are typical for the sharing members are related to the law and law enforcement. Before members start sharing, their language use is situated between non-sharers and sharers. They use positive, rapport-building, and explicit language, although lesser pronounced than non-sharers, and they refer to the forum community but not yet to the world outside the forum. Findings can be used by law enforcement in covert operations, who might want to mimic strategies to compensate for not being able to share CSAM. In addition, the results show that keyness analysis could potentially aid in differentiating between different groups of users on dark web CSAM forums, which could help law enforcement to prioritize target members in large-scale CSAM forums.