Related papers: Do Public Events Affect Sex Trafficking Activity?
In the shadow of the digital revolution, the insidious issue of human trafficking has found new breeding grounds within the realms of social media and online job boards. Previous research efforts have predominantly centered on identifying…
Sex work, or the exchange of sexual services for money or goods, is ubiquitous across eras and cultures. However, the practice of selling sex is often hidden due to stigma and the varying legal status of sex work. Online platforms that sex…
Human trafficking is among the most challenging law enforcement problems which demands persistent fight against from all over the globe. In this study, we leverage readily available data from the website "Backpage"-- used for classified…
The Internet facilitates sex trafficking through adult service websites (ASWs) that host online advertisements for sexual services (sex ads). Since the closure of the popular site Backpage.com, the ecosystem of ASWs has expanded to include…
The sex industry exists on a continuum based on the degree of work autonomy present in labor conditions: a high degree exists on one side of the continuum where independent sex workers have a great deal of agency, while much less autonomy…
Sex trafficking is a global epidemic. Escort websites are a primary vehicle for selling the services of such trafficking victims and thus a major driver of trafficker revenue. Many law enforcement agencies do not have the resources to…
Our study addresses the challenges of building datasets to understand the risks associated with organized activities and human trafficking through commercial sex advertisements. These challenges include data scarcity, rapid obsolescence,…
Web-based human trafficking activity has increased in recent years but it remains sparsely dispersed among escort advertisements and difficult to identify due to its often-latent nature. The use of intelligent systems to detect trafficking…
Like many other social phenomena, prostitution is increasingly coordinated over the Internet. The online behavior affects the offline activity; the reverse is also true. We investigated the reported sexual contacts between 6,624 anonymous…
Over two hundreds health awareness events take place in the United States in order to raise attention and educate the public about diseases. It would be informative and instructive for the organization to know the impact of these events,…
The massive amounts of geolocation data collected from mobile phone records has sparked an ongoing effort to understand and predict the mobility patterns of human beings. In this work, we study the extent to which social phenomena are…
Opioid overdose has emerged as a full blown epidemic in the United States. In the last few years, there has been an alarming increase in Opioid related deaths, resulting in the loss of 63,600 lives in 2016 alone. The epidemic which is…
With public information becoming widely accessible and shared on today's web, greater insights are possible into crowd actions by citizens and non-state actors such as large protests and cyber activism. We present efforts to predict the…
Social media is both helpful and harmful to the work against sex trafficking. On one hand, social workers carefully use social media to support people experiencing sex trafficking. On the other hand, traffickers use social media to groom…
Case records on victims of human trafficking are highly sensitive, yet the ability to share such data is critical to evidence-based practice and policy development across government, business, and civil society. We present new methods to…
Public events, such as music concerts and fireworks displays, can cause irregular surges in cross-city travel demand, leading to potential overcrowding, travel delays, and public safety concerns. To better anticipate and accommodate such…
The recent information technology revolution has enabled the analysis and processing of large-scale datasets describing human activities. The main source of data is represented by the Web, where humans generally use to spend a relevant part…
Human trafficking is a serious social problem, and it is challenging mainly because of its difficulty in collecting and organizing related information. With the increasing popularity of social media platforms, it provides us a novel channel…
Tracking the volume of keywords in Internet searches, message boards, or Tweets has provided an alternative for following or predicting associations between popular interest or disease incidences. Here, we extend that research by examining…
Sex trafficking refers to the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel an individual to perform in commercial sex acts against their will. Adult service websites (ASWs) have and continue to be linked to sex trafficking, offering a…