Steganographic Sexualization: Sustained Socio-Technicality In Online Child Sexual Exploitation And Abuse Communities

Though dedicated task forces commonly target individual child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) files and offenders, this paper views them as components of systematically formed and maintained communities. Reviewing the existing body of literature reveals that researchers rarely bridge the interdisciplinary fields contributing to the sociotechnical phenomena of CSEA communities (CSEACs) and therefore cannot accurately identify their cross-functional characteristics, nor investigate how they coevolve and reinforce each other. Multi-method qualitative data analysis adapts insights from both traditional and digital spheres, synthesizes them with communication theories, and bridges disparate studies. Its holistic perspective identifies dynamics between offenders, media, and their digital environments that strategically enforce control, transform individual abstractions into collective realities, and create frameworks for abuse. Consequently, this study reveals inherent vulnerabilities in CSEAC structures applicable for intelligence targeting.