Canadian Policing Research Catalogue

Analyzing online child exploitation networks : an examination of severity and connectivity / by Bryce Garreth Westlake.

This page has been archived on the Web

Information identified as archived is provided for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It is not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards and has not been altered or updated since it was archived. Please contact us to request a format other than those available.

Location

Canadian Policing Research

Resource

e-Books

Authors

Publishers

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 105-115)

Description

1 online resource (ix, 115, [4] pages)

Note

"Spring 2011"
Thesis (M.A.)--Simon Fraser University, 2011.

Summary

The continue growth of child pornography distribution online has resulted in the need for new innovative tools to combat the problem. Since shutting down all child exploitation (CE) websites is arguably impossible, the goal must be to find the most efficient way of identifying the key targets and then apprehend them. Using a web-crawler we specifically designed for extracting CE networks, we 1) examined the structure of ten CE networks and compared them to a control group of sports-related networks, and 2) provided a measure (network capital) that allowed for better identification of the most important targets, within each network, for law enforcement purposes. Results show that network capital - a combination of content severity (images, videos, and text) and connectivity (links to other child pornography websites) - was a more reliable measure of target prioritization than traditional methods currently being used. Implications for future research and law enforcement practices are discussed.

Subject

Online Access

Date modified: