Digital Grooming: Discourses of Manipulation and Cyber-Crime (OXFORD STUDIES SOCIOLINGUISTICS SERIES)

Illicit digital activity is a substantial and growing problem.Extremists' use of social media over the past decade or so has raised increasing concern among governments and media corporations alike.In Digital Grooming Nuria Lorenzo-Dus analyzes manipulation practices in digital spaces that are situated at, or beyond, the boundaries of law.Lorenzo-Dus identifies and examines in detail the online discourse of adults luring children for sexual abuse and exploitation (digital sexual grooming); extreme ideology groups aligning others to their views (digital ideological grooming); and drug dealers soliciting business in crypto markets (digital commercial grooming).With sophisticated style and stance analyses of large and varied datasets, the book reveals that digital sexual, ideological, and commercial grooming practices have much in common.Three stances--expertise, openness, and avidity--scaffold this manipulative work, which constructs groomers and their targets as sharing a homogenous ide