Abstract
This paper deals with the difficult yet increasingly important MIS phenomenon of online child sexual exploitation (online CSE). Through the use of secondary and publicly available data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as primary data from a cybercrime police unit in the United Kingdom, this study takes a grounded theory approach and organizes the role that technologies and social actors play in shaping online CSE. The paper contributes to IS theory by providing a consolidated model for online CSE, which we call the technology and imagery dimensions model. This model combines the staging of the phenomenon and the key dimensions that depict how the use of technology and imagery both fuels and defuses the phenomenon. In informing the construction of the model, the paper extracts, organizes, and generalizes the affordances of technology and discusses the role of information systems in detecting online CSE.
Highlights
The exploitation of children is a disturbing topic with serious social repercussions (Carr, 2013)
In order to address these gaps, while accepting the central role of imagery for both offenders and for those tasked with its prevention and detection, we focus on deconstructing the relationship between online CSE and technology by: a) taking account the centrality of imagery and delineating the process through which imagery is being used, b) extracting the enabling and constraining affordances of technology in online CSE, informed by an organisational context of a UK cybercrime unit (CCU) in UK police
How does technology and imagery enable and constrain online CSE for offenders and the Cyber-Crime Unit (CCU)? How can the process of online CSE be delineated if we take imagery to affect different stages of the process? In order to elucidate these aspects, we focus on the Information Systems (IS) implications of the phenomenon in the organisational context of cyber-crime unit of a UK police authority
Summary
The exploitation of children is a disturbing topic with serious social repercussions (Carr, 2013). Despite efforts from cybercrime police to counter such phenomena, one of the most serious forms of abuse online is online child sexual exploitation (hereinafter “online CSE”) (Jalil, 2015). Despite its social significance and the multifaceted role of technology in both enabling and constraining the phenomenon, Information Systems (IS) as a field has not far engaged with the study of online CSE. The article contributes to our theoretical understanding of the phenomenon by developing a staging model for online CSE, relating it to an organisational context, and by extracting, organising, and generalising the affordances of technology in enabling and constraining the goal-oriented actions of offenders and cybercrime police. The final section offers some conclusions about the nature of the phenomenon and its evolution, and sets out future research possibilities and research responsibilities for IS scholars
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