Child sexual exploitation and abuse in digital environments: Mapping two decades of research

Scholarship on child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) in digital environments has expanded substantially, yet it remains unclear which areas of this research field are mature, emerging, or neglected.

To map 2005-2024 scholarship, quantify topic trajectories and network structure, and identify priorities for future work.

Journal articles indexed in Web of Science (N = 191) were identified through a database search, followed by limited AI-assisted preliminary screening and human expert review.

We combined systematic mapping with keyword co-occurrence network analysis to identify structurally central, rapidly growing, and underexplored research themes. Temporal trends were tested using convergent OLS and Mann-Kendall analyses and were deemed substantive when both tests converged (p < .05).

Included research centered on legally defined concepts, particularly child sexual abuse and child pornography (a legacy term used in the source literature), which increasingly served as organizing nodes across the literature. Over time, attention shifted toward more behavior-specific and evidence-focused topics, including grooming, online grooming, sextortion, and child sexual abuse material. In contrast, broader and less specific labels like "internet" declined in prominence. Several topics, such as privacy, digital forensics, and law enforcement, appeared infrequently but occupied structurally important positions in the network. Across the literature, studies focused predominantly on offenders and legal or case-based sources, while child-centered remained limited.

The online CSEA literature within the mapped research landscape shows increasing conceptual specialization, with growing emphasis on specific behaviors and evidentiary practices. Future research would benefit from (i) methodological innovation within the established legal core, (ii) consolidation of rapidly expanding behavioral and evidentiary themes, and (iii) stronger interdisciplinary and child-centered approaches, particularly at the intersection of privacy, digital forensics, and policing.