Thousands of public posts about child sexual abuse material were analysed to map the shape of the public conversation. What emerged is a picture of a discourse that responds to news but rarely leads it. And what that silence costs child protection work.
Every month, child protection agencies process millions of reports of child sexual abuse material. The scale has long outpaced the capacity of any single institution. So when the public talks about this issue online, what do they actually say? Is the conversation driving awareness? Pushing for policy change? Supporting survivors? Demanding more from platforms and governments?
To find out, over 6,000 public posts on X were collected and systematically analysed, spanning 14 years from 2010 to 2024. Before looking at what people say about child sexual abuse material, it is worth looking at what they call it.
The recommended terminology accounts for roughly one in six posts. The language of public discourse has not caught up with the language of professional child protection practice.
Across the full analysis, two themes dominated the public conversation consistently, regardless of how the data was examined. Together they account for almost everything the public says about CSAM online.
Arrests, charges, court cases, investigations, sentences. This is what people post about most. Someone is arrested. A charge is laid. A verdict comes down. The conversation spikes around that event and then drops off. The words that appear most: arrested, charged, sentenced, investigation, police, court, prison.
What CSAM is, what it involves, what forms it takes. This theme also tends to appear in the context of specific cases being reported rather than as standalone awareness content. It describes what happened. It does not discuss what to do, who is responsible, or how to prevent it.
Both themes are news-driven. A case breaks, and people react. The conversation does not tend to start independently of news events.
Live online child sexual abuse deserves specific attention because it is growing rapidly, it is structurally different from image and video CSAM, and the public conversation about it is almost entirely absent from the data. Perpetrators can commission live abuse of children in real time. The child is abused on screen, for payment. No file is necessarily created. The transaction is completed, and the evidence largely disappears.
The platforms through which CSAM is shared, distributed, and increasingly commissioned are also the platforms through which child protection organisations reach parents, educators, and young people. This means the advocacy cannot simply move off the platforms. It has to work on them, with them, and against them simultaneously. What the data shows is that public conversation about platform responsibility is present but thin. It spikes when a specific platform is named in a high-profile case. It does not sustain between those moments.
The two dominant themes, legal proceedings and material descriptions, crowd out everything else. The following topics are largely absent from the public conversation despite being central to child protection work.
The 4-to-1 ratio of "child pornography" to "CSAM" in public posts is not going to change through a single campaign. The terminology shift in professional circles has taken decades and is still incomplete. Public language follows professional language, but with a significant lag.
The public conversation is almost entirely reactive. When there is no high-profile case, there is almost no conversation about CSAM at all. Child protection organisations need to find ways to sustain public awareness that does not depend on a news hook.
Live online child sexual abuse is growing, it is not being named in mainstream discourse, and it requires a specific response that is different from image and video CSAM. Starting that conversation in public-facing communication is a gap that child protection organisations can directly address.
Methodology. Over 6,000 public posts on X were collected and systematically analysed using keyword-based search and thematic analysis. Posts span 14 years from 2010 to 2024. Thematic classification was applied consistently across the full dataset. Language usage counts reflect how posters referred to child sexual abuse material in their posts. All analysis was conducted on public posts only. No personal identifying information was collected or retained.
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