Building the shared knowledge base
Understanding emerging threats and shared challenges is essential to strengthening efforts to prevent and respond to online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Through our partnership with Safe Online, we have invested more than $2.75 million in research supporting 16 projects that generate evidence-based insights to help protect children online.
About our research program
The Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund connects the tech industry with academic and nonprofit research institutions to better understand online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA).
We fund independent research that spans prevention, detection, and response, including projects focused on grooming behaviors, perpetrator tactics, parent awareness, and evolving risks associated with generative AI.
By bridging research and practice, the Fund helps equip tech companies, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders with insights that strengthen child safety online.
Research projects
Research supported through the Fund includes both active projects and published findings.
Fund-supported research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at leading academic conferences.
AI-generated CSAM and its implications for online harm and prevention (University of Kent)
Fabricated faces, real harms: Perspectives on generative AI risks and harms centered on children and adolescents (SaferNet Brasil)
Youth voices on AI: Shaping a safer digital future (Western Sydney University)
Facilitation of online sexual abuse and exploitation of children in the Philippines (Justice and Care + Dublin City University)
Enhancing parental roles in protecting children from online sexual exploitation and abuse in Nepal (ChildSafeNet)
Content moderators’ strategies for coping with stress of moderating content online (Middlesex University)
Youth’s experience of peer-to-peer sexual violence online, social norms and youth-led recommendations for prevention and response (Royal Roads University)
Protecting children from online grooming: cross-cultural, qualitative and child-centred data to guide grooming prevention and response (Save the Children)
Discovering child sexual abuse material creators’ behaviors and preferences on the dark web (Technological University Dublin)
Guarding the guardians: Automated analysis of online child sexual abuse (Universidad de los Andes)
Deterring searches for child sexual abuse material on Google Search and promoting help-seeking (University of Kent)
Understanding online sexual exploitation and abuse of children with intellectual disabilities in Kenya (ZanaAfrica)
Tech platforms used by online child sexual abuse offenders (Suojellaan Lapsia, Protect Children)
Developing resistance against grooming online (DRAGON+, Swansea University)
Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund
There are no current active funding calls, for more information, please visit the Safe Online website.
Visit Safe OnlineFAQs
What is the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund?
The Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund is a partnership between the Tech Coalition and Safe Online that supports research to better understand and address OCSEA.
Why does the Tech Coalition fund research?
Research helps identify emerging risks, evaluate interventions, and generate evidence that can inform industry practices, policy, and child safety strategies.
What kind of research does the Tech Coalition fund?
We fund independent research across prevention, detection, and response, with a focus on practical insights that strengthen child safety efforts.
Are there currently any active funding opportunities?
There are currently no active funding calls. Future opportunities will be announced through Safe Online and Tech Coalition channels.
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