The internet offers great opportunities to learn and connect with others, it also has a dark side, where children are vulnerable. Offenders often use language to form a relationship with the children they prey on, to gain and then betray children’s trust, exploiting children’s wonderful sociability, kind-heartedness, and curiosity.
DRAGON (Developing Resistance Against Grooming Online) is a digital technology innovation programme hosting a growing portfolio of research projects that improve practices to keep children safe from technology-assisted sexual exploitation and abuse, including online grooming.
Our research and development team has developed, piloted and had independently evaluated two state-of-the-art, ethically-responsible tools to help detect (DRAGON-Spotter) and prevent (DRAGON-Shield) online grooming.
We have also embarked on related projects: DRAGON+ (Developing Resistance Against Grooming Online – Stories Strengthened Safeguards) and C2CHAT.
Our work is underpinned by a strong co-creation ethos. We work collaboratively with hundreds of individuals (child safeguarding practitioners, children, live experience experts, researchers) and multiple organisations across Wales, the UK, Africa, Europe, Oceania and the Americas. Most of our research is applied to English language environments, whilst also paving the way for extension to other languages.
Find out more about our research.
If you would like to contact us, please email: project.dragons@swansea.ac.uk.
