Project DRAGON S Newsletter: Issue 9

Posted on 16 November 2023

Newsletter, Issue 9 November 2023   Hello and welcome to our latest newsletter… Project DRAGON-S officially launched the DRAGON-Shield training portal following a successful and insightful evaluation in Australia, New Zealand and the UK earlier this year. Further preparations have been completed for the DRAGON-Spotter evaluation phase, commencing imminently. Project DRAGON+, an exciting addition to the “developing resistance against grooming online” portfolio, has formally mobilised and has hit the ground running.    We continue to express our gratitude to those members of our Steering Board and Advisory Network, within both projects, who help to drive engagement internationally across their networks.     We continue to believe it is vitally important to keep the conversation around protecting children from sexual exploitation and abuse going, so we’d love to hear from you!    You can email us at [email protected], and connect with us on Twitter: @ProjectDragon_s and LinkedIn   Sincerely, Professor Nuria Lorenzo-Dus (DRAGON-S and DRAGON+ Principal Investigator) and team Latest news on DRAGON-Shield The full DRAGON-Shield evaluation report is now available on our website via:  https://www.swansea.ac.uk/project-dragon-s/dragon-s-research/      Following the tool pilot and evaluation, on 21st September 2023, we launched DRAGON-Shield during an online event hosted by the NWG Network. Attendees were introduced to Project DRAGON-S and were given an insight into the results of the pilot and evaluation conducted on the tool. We confirmed over 250 registrations for the event.     Project DRAGON-S will be rolling out the DRAGON-Shield training platform in 2024. Those who are interested in completing the training, or would like to know more about how to register themselves or colleagues, please email the team via [email protected].  Latest news on DRAGON-Spotter In line with the feedback received from our partner police forces during the UX testing phase, further interface enhancements have been integrated, including increased guidance for users for results interpretation. The new machine learning (ML) model has been deployed, the installation process has been simplified and the continuous learning (C.L.) functionality has been implemented following a pilot with our partner police forces. This C.L. design study, led by our team of experts in human-computer interaction, enabled us to identify the most user-friendly and effective interface to obtain user feedback on ML model outputs and re-train the model to ensure continued high levels of accuracy.    Thank you to our partner law enforcement agencies for their valuable time and feedback in testing and developing these interfaces.    DRAGON-Spotter will be available under licence to law enforcement agencies free of charge, under the usual licence protections and securing feedback from you to enable us to keep the product up-to-date for the benefit of all users.  Introducing: DRAGON+ DRAGON+ (Developing Resistance Against Grooming Online: Stories Strengthened Safeguards) is an End Violence Against Children and Tech Coalition 2023-24 collaboratively funded project to research and report on the interactional dynamics between offenders and children, including how perceived-first-person CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) may be generated and how children try to communicatively resist groomers’ manipulation.     DRAGON+ mobilised earlier this year, establishing a global network of partner organisations and conducting the initial phase of chatlog linguistic analysis.     The project is developed in partnership with UK-based lived experience experts and child safeguarding practitioners – hotline analysts and child helpline counsellors – from 23 organisations in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, as shown in the map below.   Our global network has facilitated us in completing the first phase of the child safeguarding practitioner participatory research component, engaging with English and Spanish-language-speaking practitioners in October through structured workshops. The findings are being collated and analysed in preparation for the next phase of workshops, engaging with practitioners (English and Spanish speaking), lived experience expert group and children (English and Spanish speaking).     Together, we are generating and reporting novel, richly contextualised research insights to inform the design and implementation of actionable online grooming preventative/detection technologies, at scale.    If you’re interested in hearing more about Project DRAGON+, please email the team via:  [email protected]  Events Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund Convening and Standford Trust and Safety Conference  Last September, we took part in the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund Convening. Held at the Google offices in San Francisco, the convening successfully brought together the first two cohorts of grantees of the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund along with Tech Coalition industry members to dig into opportunities for better-translating research insights on tackling digital harms to children to action in industry practice. The convening was followed by participation in a specialist panel session with selected grantees at the Stanford Trust & Safety Conference. During these events, we presented our anti-grooming technology (DRAGON-Spotter and DRAGON-Shield) and shared insights from our chatlog linguistic analysis within Project DRAGON+.  Marie Collins Foundation 2023 Conference  In October, two members of the DRAGON-Shield team attended the Marie Collins Foundation Conference 2023. This conference brought together over 90 people committed to preventing technology-assisted child sexual abuse and supporting the recovery of those affected by it. As part of this conference, the project team delivered a workshop on the DRAGON-Shield training platform. Attendees were given an overview of the tool, its development and its evaluation before being led through a live demonstration of the chat simulator. The response to the tool was enthusiastic and the team received numerous expressions of interest as a result.  Other Updates As always, the team across both projects are working hard to keep the project on track in line with our key project objectives. If you’d like to find out more about our team, please visit: https://www.swansea.ac.uk/project-dragon-s/dragon-s-team/     The Project DRAGON-S and DRAGON+ webpages have been refreshed. Please take a moment to visit: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/project-dragon-s  We endeavour to keep these up-to-date with our news and research, in addition to our quarterly newsletters.     Please also find us on LinkedIn and follow:   https://www.linkedin.com/company/project-dragon-s Upcoming Project DRAGON-S will be rolling out the DRAGON-Shield training platform in 2024. Those who are interested in completing the training, or would like to know more about how to register themselves or colleagues, please email the team via [email protected]  Contact Us Email: [email protected]  Website: www.swansea.ac.uk/project-dragon-s  Twitter: @ProjectDragon_s      Copyright © 2022 Project DRAGON-S, All rights reserved.