Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

In 2011, the illicit online marketplace ‘Silk Road’ opened for business. Located on the darknet, accessed via the Tor browser, Silk Road was the first of a new breed of darknet marketplaces (DNMs) and smartphone app-based drug markets. Participants on these transact under closely guarded aliases using sophisticated encryption. This article examines how ethnographers might study DNMs and the app-based drug trade. I spent over four years observing and interacting on these marketplaces and associated chat forums, following offline participant observation in a variety of criminal markets which provide useful methodological comparison to the DNM and smartphone app fieldwork sites. This article discusses my methods, highlights differences in online versus offline ethical concerns and risks, and I make suggestions to further the development of a formal methodology for digital ethnography of criminal and hidden online populations.

Keywords

darknet markets digital ethnography ethics ethnographic methods illicit activities online drug markets smartphone app drug markets

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aldridge

Décary-Hétu

(2014) Not an ‘Ebay for Drugs’: the Cryptomarket ‘Silk Road’ as a Paradigm Shifting Criminal Innovation. Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2436643

Aldridge

Décary-Hétu

(2016) Hidden wholesale: the drug diffusing capacity of online drug cryptomarkets. International Journal of Drug Policy 35: 7–15.

Bahn

(2012) Keeping academic field researchers safe: ethical safeguards. Journal of Academic Ethics 10(2): 83–91.

Barratt

(2012) Silk Road: eBay for drugs. Addiction 107: 683–684.

Barratt

Aldridge

(2016) Everything you always wanted to know about drug cryptomarkets* (*but were afraid to ask) [Editorial] International Journal of Drug Policy 35: 1–6.

Barratt

Maddox

(2016) Active engagement with stigmatised communities through digital ethnography. Qualitative Research 16(6): 701–719.

Barratt

Ferris

Winstock

(2014) Use of Silk Road, the online drug marketplace, in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. Addiction 109(5): 774–783.

Barratt

Ferris

Winstock

(2016) Safer scoring? Cryptomarkets, social supply and drug market violence. International Journal of Drug Policy 35: 24–31.

Bartlett

(2014) The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld. New York: Melville House.

10.

Blank

(2007) Critics, Ratings, and Society: The Sociology of Reviews. Rowman & Littlefield.

11.

Borromeo

(2016) Drug dealers using Instagram and Tinder to find young customers. The Guardian, 7 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/apr/07/drug-dealers-instagram-tinder-young-customers

12.

boyd

Crawford

(2012) Critical questions for Big Data. Information, Communication & Society 15(5): 662–679.

13.

Broséus

Rhumorbarbe

Mireault

. (2016) Studying illicit drug trafficking on darknet markets: structure and organization from a Canadian perspective. Forensic Science International 264: 7–14.

14.

Brotsky

Giles

(2007) Inside the ‘pro-ana’ community: a covert online participant observation. Eating Disorders 15: 93–109.

15.

Brown

Laurier

(2012) Word of mouth: products, conversations and consumption. Consumption, Markets & Culture 2012: 1–21.

16.

Brown

(2010) Beyond recommendations: local review websites and their impact. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). December:1–24.

17.

Chen

(2016) The underground website where you can buy any drug imaginable. Gawker. Available at: http://gawker.com/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imag-30818160

18.

Chevalier

Mayzlin

(2004) The effect of word of mouth on sales: online book reviews. Journal of Marketing Research 43(3): 345–54.

19.

Christin

(2012) Traveling the Silk Road: a measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace. arXiv:1207.7139v2. Available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/ 1207.7139

20.

Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil

Kossinets

. (2009) How opinions are received by online communities: a case study on Amazon.com helpfulness votes. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on World Wide Web. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 141–150.

21.

Décary-Hétu

Paquet-Clouston

Aldridge

(2016) Going international? Risk taking by cryptomarket drug vendors. International Journal of Drug Policy 35: 69–76.

22.

Décary-Hétu

Aldridge

(2015) Sifting through the net: monitoring of online offenders by Researchers. The European Review of Organised Crime 2(2): 122–141.

23.

Dolliver

(2015a) A rejoinder to authors: data collection on Tor. International Journal of Drug Policy 26(11): 1128–1129.

24.

Dolliver

(2015b) Evaluating drug trafficking on the Tor network: Silk Road 2, the sequel. International Journal of Drug Policy 26(11): 1113–1123.

25.

EMCDDA: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (2016) European Drug Report: Trends and Developments. Available at: http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/2637/TDAT16001ENN.pdf

26.

Ferguson

(2016) The digital underground: here’s how you can buy drugs on social media, right now’. Complex Magazine (June) http://www.complex.com/life/2016/06/digital-underground-weed-market

27.

Ferguson

. Fiend or fed? Trust and identity in online and offline drug markets (working paper).

28.

Fine

Hancock

(2016) The new ethnographer at work. Qualitative Research 17(2): 260–268.

29.

Garrett

(2014) Place-Hacker Bradley Garrett: research at the edge of the law. Times Higher Education, 5 June. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/place-hacker-bradley-garrett-research-at-the-edge-of-the-law/2013717.article

30.

Gehl

(2016) Power/freedom on the dark web: a digital ethnography of the dark web social network. New Media and Society 18(7): 1219–1235.

31.

Hine

(2008) Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Oxford: Berg.

32.

Knox

(2001) Establishing research legitimacy in the contested political ground of contemporary Northern Ireland. Qualitative Research 1(2): 205–222.

33.

Levitt

Venkatesh

(2000) An economic analysis of a drug-selling gang’s finances. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 115(3): 755–789.

34.

Lupton

(2015) Digital Sociology Abingdon: Routledge.

35.

Markoff

(2005) What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. London: Penguin.

36.

Martin

(2014) Drugs on the Dark Net. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

37.

McGurk

(2016) What happened when GQ tried to buy drugs on Instagram and Tinder. Available at: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/buying-drugs-instagram-tinder

38.

Mohamed

Fritzvold

(2011) Dorm Room Dealers: Drugs and the Privileges of Race and Class. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

39.

Munksgaard

Demant

Branwen

(2016) A replication and methodological critique of the study ‘Evaluating drug trafficking on the Tor network’. International Journal of Drug Policy 35: 92–96.

40.

Orsolini

Francesconi

Papanti

. (2015) Profiling online recreational/prescription drugs’ customers and overview of drug vending virtual marketplaces. Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental 30(4): 302–318.

41.

Paechter

(2013) Researching sensitive issues online: implications of a hybrid insider/outsider position in a retrospective ethnographic study. Qualitative Research 13(1): 71–86.

42.

Perrone

(2010) Gender and sexuality in the field: a female ethnographer’s experience researching drug use in dance clubs. Substance Use & Misuse 45(7): 717–735.

43.

Pink

Horst

Postill

. (2015) Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice London: SAGE.

44.

Poulton

(2012) ‘If you had balls, you’d be one of us!’ Doing gender research: methodological reflections on being a female academic researcher in the hyper-masculine subculture of ‘football hooliganism’. Sociological Research Online 17(4).

45.

Simmel

(1950) The sociology of Georg Simmel. ( Wolff

Kurt H.

, Trans). New York: Free Press.

46.

Soska

Christin

(2015) Measuring the longitudinal evolution of the online anonymous marketplace ecosystem. In: Proceedings of the 24th USENIX Security Symposium. Washington, DC, 12-14 August 2015, 33–48. Available at: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical-sessions/presentation/sosk

47.

Taylor

Kearney

(2005) Researching hard-to reach populations: privileged access interviewers and drug using parents. Sociological Research Online 10(2).

48.

Thelwall

Vaughan

Björneborn

(2005) Webometrics. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 39(1): 81–135.

49.

Tofighi

Desai

Grov

Lee

(2016) Craigslist as a Source for heroin: a report of two cases. Journal of Substance Use 21(5): 543–546.

50.

Tor Project (2011) Anonymity online. https://torproject.org/

51.

Tzanetakis

Kamphausen

Werse

von Laufenberg

(2016) The transparency paradox: building trust, resolving disputes and optimising logistics on conventional and online drugs markets. International Journal of Drug Policy 35: 58–68.

52.

Van Hout

Bingham

(2013a) ‘Silk Road’, the virtual drug marketplace: a single case study of user experiences. The International Journal of Drug Policy 24(5): 385–391.

53.

Van Hout

Bingham

(2013b) ‘Surfing the Silk Road’: a study of users’ experiences. International Journal of Drug Policy 24: 524–529.

54.

Van Hout

Bingham

(2014) Responsible vendors, intelligent consumers: Silk Road, the online revolution in drug trading. International Journal of Drug Policy 25(2): 183–189.

55.

Watts

(2003) Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. New York: W.W. Norton.

56.

Williams

(1990) The Cocaine Kids: The Inside Story of a Teenage Drug Ring. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

57.

Williams

(1992) Crackhouse: Notes From the End of the Line. New York: Penguin.

58.

Zaitch

(2002) Trafficking Cocaine: Colombian Drug Entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.

59.

Zaitch

(2005) The ambiguity of violence, secrecy, and trust among Colombian drug entrepreneurs. Journal of Drug Issues 35(1): 201–228.

Offline ‘stranger’ and online lurker: methods for an ethnography of illicit transactions on the darknet

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References