Sellers’ risk perceptions in public and private social media drug markets

Bakken, Silje Anderdal; Demant, Jakob

doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2019.03.009

Cited by 45 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Their only concern with dealing on social media was that they were often compelled to meet the buyers in person. It can be hypothesized that the low threshold of digital capital is marked by the differentiation between those who source drugs locally and those who buy on cryptomarkets (Bakken and Demant, 2019). This phenomenon of dealers buying their products on darknet markets before reselling on the surface Web, a practice in which the surface Web acts as a 'retail' portal for goods obtained in 'wholesale' markets on the Dark Web, is an interesting avenue for further research.…”

Section: How Are the Prescription Drugs Advertised?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social media markets for prescription drugs: platforms as virtual mortars for drug types and dealers

Demant

Bakken

Hall

2020

DAT

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Purpose Internet use has changed the mechanics of drug dealing. Although this has spurred some initial academic interest in how markets and their users have been changing, the issue is still under-researched. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the organisation of the distribution of prescription drugs and other illegal drugs overlap in these online markets by analysing data gathered from observation of the Swedish Facebook drug market and its participants. Design/methodology/approach Data were gathered during three months of digital ethnography conducted among Swedish Facebook posters supplemented by 25 interviews with sellers (20) and buyers (5). Screenshots and interview data were coded by carrying out an NVivo-based content analysis. The analysis is based on descriptive statistics of drug types, co-occurrence with other drugs, group size and the demographic characteristics of sellers. Additionally, the interviewees’ descriptions of the marketplace and their drug dealing or buying activities were included in the analysis. Findings In total, 57 Swedish Facebook groups that sold illegal substances were located. The groups rarely specialised in specific drug types, but were convened around demographic factors, such as specific cities and locales. The sales of prescription drugs were part of the overall activity of groups selling other illegal drugs, but they were more often sold in separate Facebook posts, possibly by specialist sellers. Swedish Facebook sales primarily concerned alprazolam, tramadol, pregabalin and clonazepam, and were sold by both professional and amateur sellers. Originality/value This study reports findings from a Nordic comparative study on social media drug dealing, representing the first in-depth study of digitally mediated prescription drug dealing outside of cryptomarkets.

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Section: How Are the Prescription Drugs Advertised?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Social media markets for prescription drugs: platforms as virtual mortars for drug types and dealers

Demant

Bakken

Hall

2020

DAT

Self Cite

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“…The emergence of online illicit markets means that their participants can be less technically skilled and work in less densely networked and more disperse groups (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu, 2016). Indeed the bulk of online illicit drug transactions take place through location apps, websites, and social media, in what are highly technically insecure environments (Bakken and Demant, 2019; Moyle et al, 2019). This presents risks for participants as it exposes them to relatively easy compromise.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing Trust Among Illicit Actors: A Techno-Social Approach to an Online Illicit Market

Bancroft

Squirrell

Zaunseder

et al. 2019

Sociological Research Online

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Illicit market exchanges in cybercriminal markets are plagued by problems of verifiability and enforceability: trust is one way to ensure reliable exchange. It is fragile and hard to establish. One way to do that is to use the administrative structure of the digital market to control transactions. This is common among a specific type of market – darknet cryptomarkets. These are sites for the sale of illicit goods and services, hosted anonymously using the Tor darknet. However, reliance by users on the technology and the market administrators exposes users to excessive risk. We examine a case of a market that rejects several key technological features now common in cryptomarkets but that is nonetheless reliable and robust. We apply a techno-social approach that looks at the way participants use and combine technologies with trust relationships. The study was designed to capture the interactional context of the illicit market. We aimed to examine both person-to-person interaction and the technical infrastructure the market relied on. We find that the social space of the market maintains itself through a shared common security orientation, community participation in key decisions about products sold, performing trust signalling, and relying on lateral trust between members. There are implications for how resilience in cryptomarkets is understood.

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“…Lastly, and somewhere between surface web and deep web cryptomarkets, the utilization of social media and encrypted messaging applications has recently been acknowledged as another mechanism of drug supply through online technologies. Apps are used in diverse ways to organize drug exchanges between buyers and sellers (Demant et al, 2019; Moyle et al, 2019), including as large-scale commercial marketplaces, but also as a preferred communication tool between sellers and their customers (Bakken & Demant, 2019; Demant et al, 2019; Moyle et al, 2019). App-based drug exchanges, unlike other forms of online drug supply, still involve a physical meeting for the exchange of drugs, but the structural features and reliance on technology clearly differentiates this supply from the remit of pure offline drug exchanges.…”

Section: The Affordance Of Rationality In Online Illicit Drug Market mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Online Illicit Drug Market Exchanges Afford Rationality?

Childs

Coomber

Bull

2020

Contemporary Drug Problems

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Rational choice perspectives have been the dominant models used for conceptualizing the nature of exchanges in illicit drug markets, but various critiques have found these abstracted assumptions inadequate for understanding concrete illicit drug market activity. Considerably less, however, is known about key aspects of rationality in exchanges within online drug markets. Recognizing the inadequacies of an underlying homo economicus, we instead conceive drug market exchanges as complex assemblages, noting how exchanges are reconstructed in online spaces, and technological affordances may facilitate elements of rationality in drug exchanges. Adopting these notions allows us to argue that aspects of rationality can potentially contribute to an understanding of exchange practices in online markets, and that online channels can afford assumptions of utility-maximization, rich market information to guide decision-making, and anonymity in the exchange. In addition, consideration is given to the structural variability of online illicit drug markets, and that the affordance of rationality should be considered across a spectrum of applicability that takes into account the specifics of each dimension of online drug market (i.e. drug cryptomarkets, illicit online pharmacies, and “app-based” drug markets).

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Sellers’ risk perceptions in public and private social media drug markets

Cited by 45 publications

References 30 publications

Social media markets for prescription drugs: platforms as virtual mortars for drug types and dealers

Social media markets for prescription drugs: platforms as virtual mortars for drug types and dealers

Producing Trust Among Illicit Actors: A Techno-Social Approach to an Online Illicit Market

Do Online Illicit Drug Market Exchanges Afford Rationality?

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