How Do Pedophiles Tweet? Investigating the Writing Styles and Online Personas of Child Cybersex Traffickers in the Philippines

One of the most important humanitarian responsibility of every individual is to protect the future of our children. This entails not only protection of physical welfare but also from ill events that can potentially affect the mental well-being of a child such as sexual coercion and abuse which, in worst-case scenarios, can result to lifelong trauma. In this study, we perform a preliminary investigation of how child sex peddlers spread illegal pornographic content and target minors for sexual activities on Twitter in the Philippines using Natural Language Processing techniques. Results of our studies show frequently used and co-occurring words that traffickers use to spread content as well as four main roles played by these entities that contribute to the proliferation of child pornography in the country.