Linguistic Indications of More Severe Behavior on Child Sexual Abuse Material Forums

Due to their anonymous and large-scale nature, darknet forums dedicated to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) pose a major challenge to law enforcement. Therefore, prioritization on such forums is essential. The current study looks for linguistic indications of more severe behavior on a CSAM forum, focusing on hands-on abuse, expressed interest in the more extreme forms of CSAM, and participation in sharing CSAM. Using the corpus linguistic technique Keyness Analysis, we found that posts displaying more severe behavior showed more cognitive distortions such as sexualizing and objectifying children. The focus on lexical choices is a promising new direction in the investigation of this hidden community.