Twittering Child Trafficking: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Selected X Interactions

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This paper examines the representation of child trafficking discourse in online interactions. Data for the study were part of a larger project corpus of 83,815 posts with 1,044,209 tokens collected between July 2023 and May 2024 using the Apify Twitter Scraper. The study adopted a mixed method of corpus-based methodologies and qualitative discourse analysis (QDA). SketchEngine was deployed to quantitatively analyse and track the occurrences of words around child trafficking, while insights drawn from Reisigl and Wodak’s (2009. “The Discourse-Historical Approach.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis . 2nd ed., edited by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 87–121. London: Sage) discursive strategies foreground the QDA. Findings reveal that child trafficking discourse manifests two discursive patterns: representation and construction. The former, which captures explicit and implicit depictions through predication and perspectivation strategies, reveals how child trafficking is negatively evaluated as a crisis, crime and evil, and the implicit portrayal of the act as a war. The construction of child trafficking as being downplayed, through intensification and predication strategies, relates to social protest and harsh criticism of the media and political officeholders, and as advocacy along the lines of social movements (e-activism) through hashtags. Thus, the study complements existing knowledge on children’s representation in social media, as online participants’ discourses reinforce awareness-raising, agitation and calls for action.