Promoting and Profiting from Child Sexual Abuse on Instagram

Shame on BBC World Service?

The Commodification of Child Sexual Abuse as Media Spectacle: How Investigative Journalism May Reproduce the Attention Economy It Seeks to Critique

Watch the BBC World Service YouTube documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-y726qvZ6Q

Based on this media content, I offer a critical media content analysis from the perspective of digital media studies and the political economy of communication.

This documentary is interesting, informative, well-planned, and represents a compelling example of investigative journalism. However, I argue that its ultimate effect may reproduce the very media logic that it seeks to expose. My central argument is that, within the contemporary networked and algorithmic media environment, child sexual abuse has itself become a powerful media commodity. It attracts audience attention, generates engagement, and enhances institutional visibility. Consequently, even investigative reporting that seeks to expose exploitation may inadvertently become part of the same attention economy.

My argument is not that investigative journalism and social media platforms are morally equivalent. Rather, I argue that investigative reporting may inadvertently reproduce and commodify the spectacle of child sexual abuse within the contemporary attention economy. In the BBC investigation, Divya exposed how Instagram and other platforms facilitated networks associated with child sexual abuse material. The investigation presented important evidence of platform failures and raised significant questions about corporate responsibility. However, by concluding with Meta's response and its claims regarding efforts to combat child sexual abuse, the documentary also reinserted the corporation into a narrative of accountability and institutional reform.

A further dimension of my critique concerns the documentary's narrative structure. Throughout the investigation, Divya is positioned not merely as a journalist presenting evidence but also as the central narrative figure whose emotional responses become an important part of the storytelling. Her expressions of shock, distress, and discomfort—particularly when describing her inability to continue viewing certain child sexual abuse material—invite viewers to experience the investigation emotionally as well as intellectually. From a media studies perspective, this may be understood as a melodramatic narrative strategy in which emotional identification becomes a mechanism for producing audience engagement, empathy, and moral alignment.

From a critical political economy perspective, this raises a broader question: does investigative journalism merely expose exploitation, or can it also become part of the media economy that depends upon the circulation of traumatic and highly sensational content? By repeatedly presenting child sexual abuse as the documentary's central media theme, investigative journalism may unintentionally transform human suffering into media spectacle. The journalist's emotional narration, the documentary's dramatic storytelling, and the repeated verbal references to child sexual abuse together contribute to a powerful media event that attracts public attention and reinforces the institutional visibility and credibility of the broadcaster.

Within the contemporary attention economy, audience engagement itself possesses economic, symbolic, and institutional value. Consequently, one may argue that investigative journalism, despite serving an important public-interest function, can also participate in the same economy of visibility that characterises digital platforms. In this sense, child sexual abuse becomes not only a criminal issue requiring exposure but also a highly marketable media theme. The investigation may therefore contribute to what can be described as a secondary commodification of child sexual abuse: the abuse is first exploited within digital platform economies and is subsequently re-circulated within the news economy as investigative content that generates further audience attention, institutional legitimacy, and public engagement.

This argument is situated within the wider political economy of communication. Contemporary media conglomerates—whether digital platforms or traditional news organisations—operate within an attention economy in which visibility itself possesses economic value. Although their ethical responsibilities, editorial standards, institutional roles, and intentions differ significantly, both depend upon attracting audiences through compelling and emotionally engaging narratives. Consequently, representations of child sexual abuse may themselves become commodified, not only through algorithmic recommendation systems but also through the branding, promotion, and circulation of investigative journalism.

The critical question, therefore, is not simply whether media organisations expose abuse, but whether the repeated representation of abuse also participates in the same economy of visibility and spectacle that sustains contemporary media industries. If child sexual abuse has become one of the most powerful commodities within the global digital attention economy, then critical academic analysis should examine not only those who produce and distribute abusive material but also how media institutions represent, circulate, and repeatedly narrate such suffering. This is not an argument against investigative journalism itself. Rather, it is a call to interrogate whether the representation of abuse can itself become a second-order commodification of child sexuality within the political economy of contemporary media spectacle.

Major investigations, including those conducted by The Wall Street Journal in collaboration with Stanford University's Internet Observatory and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Rescue Lab, have documented how Meta's recommendation algorithms on Instagram actively connected, promoted, and facilitated networks involved in the trading of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).

A landmark investigation conducted by The Wall Street Journal in collaboration with researchers from Stanford University's Internet Observatory and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Rescue Lab demonstrated that Instagram's recommendation algorithms did not merely host illegal Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) but actively facilitated connections between buyers and sellers. By analysing newly created Instagram accounts, the researchers found that minimal interaction with offending accounts rapidly triggered algorithmic recommendations directing users towards additional CSAM-related accounts. Rather than functioning solely as neutral content-ranking systems, Instagram's engagement-driven recommendation algorithms operated as discovery mechanisms that strengthened networks devoted to advertising, commissioning, and trading CSAM. Following the investigation, Meta acknowledged shortcomings in its enforcement systems and introduced measures intended to reduce the recommendation of exploitative content and related accounts (Horwitz & Blunt, 2023; Stamos et al., 2023).

Media Spectacle, the Attention Economy, and the Secondary Commodification of Child Sexual Abuse

This analysis is grounded in the political economy of communication, media spectacle theory, and critical digital media studies. Rather than evaluating the moral intentions of journalists or media organisations, the analysis examines the structural conditions through which representations of child sexual abuse may themselves become commodified within contemporary networked media. The central concern is not whether investigative journalism should expose child sexual abuse—it undoubtedly should—but whether such exposure also becomes incorporated into the economic and symbolic logic of the contemporary attention economy.

The first theoretical foundation is Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (1967; English translation, 1994). Debord argues that modern capitalist societies are increasingly organised around spectacles in which social relationships are mediated through images, representations, and commodities rather than through direct human experience. According to Debord, the spectacle is not merely a collection of images but "a social relation among people mediated by images." Consequently, war, violence, disasters, political crises, and human suffering increasingly acquire exchange value because they circulate as visual commodities within media systems. From this perspective, representations of child sexual abuse may also become part of the broader economy of spectacle, where visibility itself generates symbolic, cultural, and economic value.

Building upon Debord's work, Douglas Kellner, in Media Spectacle (2003), argues that contemporary media industries increasingly construct dramatic public events as spectacles in order to attract audiences and shape public consciousness. Kellner demonstrates that modern media organisations compete for attention by transforming political conflicts, wars, disasters, crime, celebrity scandals, and social crises into compelling narratives. Investigative journalism therefore performs a dual function. On the one hand, it fulfils an essential democratic responsibility by exposing wrongdoing and holding powerful institutions accountable. On the other hand, it also produces emotionally engaging narratives that strengthen audience attention, institutional legitimacy, and media visibility. This contradiction lies at the centre of the present analysis.

The political economy of communication provides a further theoretical foundation through the work of Vincent Mosco in The Political Economy of Communication (1996; 2nd ed., 2009). Mosco argues that communication systems should be analysed through the interconnected processes of commodification, spatialisation, and structuration. Commodification extends beyond physical goods to include information, images, emotions, knowledge, audiences, and communication itself. Within commercial media systems, audience attention becomes a marketable commodity exchanged for advertising revenue, institutional influence, and economic profit. Consequently, media organisations are structurally encouraged to produce content capable of attracting and sustaining public attention.

This process becomes even more pronounced within digital capitalism. Christian Fuchs, in Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies (2011), Social Media: A Critical Introduction (2014; subsequent editions), and Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter (2018), argues that digital platforms transform user activity, communication, emotions, and attention into economic value through surveillance, algorithmic recommendation, targeted advertising, and data extraction. Within platform capitalism, visibility itself becomes a commodity. Algorithms prioritise content capable of generating prolonged engagement because user attention is directly converted into advertising revenue and commercial profit.

The logic of continuous attention has also been examined by Jonathan Crary in 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (2013). Crary argues that contemporary capitalism increasingly seeks to eliminate interruptions to consumption by transforming every moment of daily life into opportunities for economic activity and media engagement. Within this twenty-four-hour attention economy, emotionally disturbing narratives—including violence, tragedy, crime, and abuse—frequently receive greater visibility because they generate stronger emotional responses, longer viewing times, and greater audience participation.

Similarly, Shoshana Zuboff, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2019), argues that digital corporations increasingly extract behavioural data and transform human experience into commercial prediction products. Although Zuboff focuses primarily on surveillance and behavioural data, her analysis also illustrates how human experiences—including fear, curiosity, outrage, empathy, and emotional engagement—become economically valuable resources within digital capitalism.

Drawing these theoretical traditions together, this article proposes the concept of secondary commodification of child sexual abuse. The first commodification occurs when child sexual abuse material is produced, distributed, algorithmically recommended, and economically exploited within digital platform economies. A secondary commodification may occur when the same abuse is repeatedly represented, narrated, branded, and circulated through news organisations, documentaries, and investigative journalism. Although investigative journalism serves a fundamentally different ethical purpose from criminal exploitation, both forms of representation exist within an attention economy in which visibility, audience engagement, institutional legitimacy, and commercial sustainability are closely interconnected.

Accordingly, this article does not argue that investigative journalism is morally equivalent to social media platforms that facilitate or profit from child sexual abuse. Rather, it argues that investigative journalism may inadvertently participate in the wider economy of media spectacle by transforming traumatic social realities into compelling public narratives. The critical analytical question, therefore, is not whether journalism should expose abuse—it unquestionably should—but how such exposure is shaped by the political economy of digital media, where public-interest reporting, institutional branding, audience attention, and economic value increasingly intersect. Understanding this tension between democratic journalism and the commodification of suffering constitutes one of the central challenges of critical media studies in the digital age.

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