Article
Liking and hyperlinking: Community detection in online child sexual exploitation networks
Social Science Research
(2016)
Abstract
The online sexual exploitation of children is facilitated by websites that form virtual communities, via hyperlinks, to distribute images, videos, and other material. However, how these communities form, are structured, and evolve over time is unknown. Collected using a custom-designed webcrawler, we begin from known child sexual exploitation (CE) seed websites and follow hyperlinks to connected, related, websites. Using a repeated measure design we analyze 10 networks of 300 + websites each – over 4.8 million unique webpages in total, over a period of 60 weeks. Community detection techniques reveal that CE-related networks were dominated by two large communities hosting varied material –not necessarily matching the seed website. Community stability, over 60 weeks, varied across networks. Reciprocity in hyperlinking between community members was substantially higher than within the full network, however, websites were not more likely to connect to homogeneous-content websites.
Keywords
- Internet mediated research,
- Child sexual exploitation,
- Child pornography,
- Cybercrime,
- Social networks,
- Online communities
Disciplines
Publication Date
2016
DOI
10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.04.010
Publisher Statement
This is the Author's Original Manuscript of an article that appeared in Social Science Research, 59, 2016. The Version of Record is available at the following link: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.04.010.
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Citation Information
Bryce Garreth Westlake and Martin Bouchard. "Liking and hyperlinking: Community detection in online child sexual exploitation networks" Social Science Research Vol. 59 (2016) p. 23 - 36 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/bryce_westlake/9/