Today, February 7th, marks Safer Internet Day.
"The day offers the opportunity to highlight positive uses of technology and to explore the role we all play in helping to create a better and safer online community. It calls upon young people, parents, carers, teachers, social workers, law enforcement, companies, policymakers, and wider, to join together in helping to create a better internet." (UK Safer Internet Centre)
It may seem rather counterintuitive that I'm the one to be going on about this, given the fact I've often discussed fooling about on various (dodgy) sites like Omegle, and generally just indulging in somewhat risqué behaviours online. So I'm hardly one to preach. However, internet safety is very important to me. We should all be striving towards a safer online community for all.
I've always been keen to create a safer environment for younger people online. I appreciate it's probably because of the weird stuff I got up to myself as a young person. I understand the issues out there.
Anyway.
So as it's Safer Internet Day, I'd like to share with you a thing I find pretty neat. It may stem from the fact I've always loved To Catch a Predator episodes and, more recently, Creep Catcher videos on YouTube (watch some, it's a catchy tune, too) but I like knowing children can go online without having to worry about being groomed.
In his book Internet Linguistics, David Crystal discusses a means of linguistic analysis that could be used to help protect young people online. Although I'm sure there have been advances in such algorithms since (I'd be happy to learn of them), the Cumulative Paedophile Index (CPI) looked at identifying features such as suggestive words (SW), phrases and sentences that seemed to express a predator's underlying intent (Crystal, 2011). Crystal set up a "lexical scale of suggestiveness"- essentially, what sort of topics were being discussed between a potential predator and victim, and at what level of suggestiveness the conversational path was taking. The scale ran from 1 to 5, with over 350 words (including variant forms) being classified in such a way. Here are some of Crystal's examples of words found at the different levels:
Level 1 words: age, friend
Level 2 words: enjoy, legs
Level 3 words: alone, cam
Level 4 words: bare, bedroom
Level 5 words: breasts, meeting
(Crystal, 2011: 126)
Crystal hypothesised that "a paedophile conversation would show a steady accumulation of SWs, whereas an innocent conversation would not" (Crystal, 2011: 126). Basically, a typical 'grooming' pattern was established, where predators would first try and befriend victims, then assess if they would be at risk of detection, only to progress into more sexually-charged conversation.
An important message behind this work is how one can use such analyses for the purposes of intervention. How should children stay safe? How can they recognise the potential dangers that are posed to them online?
There's not really a simple answer. Many people need to be involved. Safer Internet Day and all the good organisations that help to provide a better online atmosphere for all, is but the beginning.
#SID2017
Crystal, D. (2011). Internet linguistics: A Student Guide Abingdon, (Oxon: Routledge).
