Researching Digital Drift

Transcription

1 Researching Digital Drift Andrew Goldsmith Russell Brewer Centre for Crime Policy & Research

2 Digital Drift and the Internet Need to conceptualise the Internet in order to examine its significance as: A medium for entering into, and participating in, criminal activity [mediation] A partner /prosthesis in criminal activity (its own agentic properties) [constitutive] Proposing to develop a socio-technical approach: Technical features ( affordances ) Cultural/social/individual features A dynamic view of their interplay

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4 Understanding the Internet Apple is building a world in which there is a computer in your every interaction, waking and sleeping. The Apple ecosystem is like a swamp. The more we interact with it, the deeper we are drawn into it. Fortunately, it is a very lovely swamp. [Mat Honan, Why Apple Devices Will Soon Rule Every Aspect of Your Life Wired, 10 September 2014]

5 What is the Internet? Not a single entity, consists of various platforms, sites etc an assemblage as much as a structure or network Search engines (eg Google) a key component in our study of digital drift Two elements of the Internet are particularly important: Software algorithms, code Databases - information

6 The Internet as productive medium The Internet Encourages individuals to act alone, to think they can do virtually anything (potentiality) can do Estrangement (losing the power to resist) or empowerment (enabling to do more)? Hypothesis: diminishes the individual s ability to not do anything or everything ( impotentiality Giorgio Agamben)

7 The Internet s technological unconscious In highly developed and networked societies human awareness comprises the tip of a huge pyramid of data flows, most of which occurs between machines [Hayles 2006, 161] Algorithms condition possibilities, make suggestions to users about who they are, what they feel, need etc.

8 The components of our study

9 Questions we need to ask This would consider how and why individuals divulge information about themselves, how they play with and within the boundaries of the software, how they react to and resist the impulsions written into the codes, how they reflexively design profiles, how they hold back or give information, what they know about how they are being sorted, how and with what consequences they employ a classificatory imagination as they tag and classify content, what they come across on Web 2.0, and how they come across it. [D Beer 2009, p.998]

10 The Internet as a socialising agent The internet has created a new learning culture, which is social in nature, allowing adolescents to share, discuss, influence and learn interactively from each other and from the medium. Adolescents today learn not by merely observing and modeling, social learning theory, but rather through a process of discovery and participation. (Lee & Conroy 2003: 1709)

11 Categories of involvement online Communication Commerce Entertainment / leisure Gathering information Excitement / lust / sex

12 The literature, human engagement & the machine Focus on specific forms of cybercrime Extent of Offending Characteristics of offences Characteristics of offenders Investigations, prosecutions and sentencing The Internet is another plain for which criminality occurs Criminal inclination is a given (Yar 2005: 412)

13 BECOMING DELINQUENT ONLINE Entering Exploring Exploiting Exiting

14 Study characteristics Longitudinal and multi-method: Survey and interviews with adolescents Internet literacy Self reporting for various forms of online activity across various categories Examination of the degrees/escalation of involvement (legitimate illicit) Focus on the perceptions of / flirtations with the edge Supplement with interviews with law enforcement, court cases, web data where available

15 So what? To provide a better understanding the line between licit and illicit and how online users might be deterred, pull back or reverse course Identify a range of risk factors within the Internet environment and their use by young people