2.01 Detecting grooming behaviour on social media

Academic team: Prof Harith Alani, Dr Elizabeth Cano, Dr Miriam Fernandez,  
Policing partners: Dorset Police, Avon and Somerset Police, Lancashire Constabulary
Status: Complete

Online paedophile activity has become a major concern in society with the internet widely available to the general population and young people.

This piece of research looked into whether the different stages of online grooming behaviour could be automatically detected. The proposed approach combines Machine Learning (ML) techniques  with existing psychological theories and discourse studies to better encapsulate existing knowledge of online grooming. 

The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach for the automatic detection of online grooming stages, opening new possibilities for addressing predator grooming behaviour online, and helping policing organisations to act in a preventive way.

Outputs

TitleOutputs typeLead academicYear
Detecting child grooming behaviour patterns on social mediaExecutive summaryAlani, H2017
Detecting grooming behaviour on social mediaPresentationAlani, H2017
Detecting child grooming behaviour patterns on social mediaFinal reportAlani, H2016

News

Landmark Article in the British Journal of Social Psychology

Professor Clifford Stott (Centre for Policing Research and Learning) has published a Landmark Article in the British Journal of Social Psychology, one of the discipline’s leading international journals. The paper examines the historical relationship between social psychology, crowd theory, and the governance of public order.

1st April 2026