Cybercrime is a growing issue, still not fully understood by researchers or policing/law enforcement communities. UK Government reports assert that victims of cybercrime were unlikely to report crimes immediately due to the perception that police were ill-equipped to deal with these offences. Additionally, these reports identify policing issues including a lack of cybercrime knowledge. This paper reviews current research, providing a comprehensive account of cybercrime and addressing issues in policing such offences. We achieve this by describing the technological, individual, social and situational landscapes conducive to cybercrime, and how this knowledge may inform strategies to overcome current issues in investigations.
This article theorizes fresh connections between Bourdieusian social theory, and the digital divide in five key areas: political, economic, cultural, social, and personal digital advantage. In so doing it makes new arguments about how digital resources result in benefits that accrue from the combination of both access to and use of ICTs. In this way, the findings shed additional light on the third level of the digital divide by focusing on the role played by digital capital in influencing the uneven distribution of benefits that derive from the use of the Internet. Based on a structured sample of the UK population, the article adopts the model of digital capital developed by Ragnedda, Ruiu and Addeo (2019). Findings show that varied levels of digital capital are related to engagement in activities that have political, social, economic, cultural, and personal valence. Thus, the study offers compelling evidence of the increasing importance of digital capital in everyday life.
Summer is a stressful time of year for many parents as they struggle to meet household expenses and feed children. The aim of the present study is to determine if there is an association between summertime food insecurity (i.e., holiday hunger) and parental stress among a sample of UK parents with school age children living in North East England. A cross-sectional sample of (n = 252) parents are analyzed using holiday hunger as the independent variable and a subjective measure of stress that treats summer as a 'stressful event' as the dependent variable. Of the parents in the sample, 64.8% reported at least some level of holiday hunger. We find parents facing any holiday hunger scored substantively higher on the overall 75-point Impact of Event Scale (mean difference = 30.4, 95% confidence interval ((CI) 24.2–36.6), the 35-point intrusion subscale (13.7, 95% CI 10.8–16.5), and the 40-point avoidance subscale (16.7, 95% CI 13.3–20.2). These findings are replicated in a regression analysis. In addition, we find that holiday hunger partially mediates the association between economic hardship (i.e., unemployment and poverty) and parental stress. We conclude by suggesting that government policies addressing economic hardship are not only likely to reduce holiday hunger, but also improve mental wellbeing.
This article describes a two-phased reflexive ethical process initiated when choosing digital cameras for the photovoice method in research with men living in low income contexts. While this participatory method aims to flatten power asymmetries in researcher-researched relationships, debate is needed about how pragmatic technology choices may inadvertently underscore or even reinforce participants' situated experiences of disempowerment and constraint. Critically engaging with an ethics of care approach to decision-making, we unpick what superficially appears to be a straightforward problem of method, and demonstrate how pragmatic decisions may confound researchers' efforts towards democratisation in research. We reflect on how such efforts may inadvertently obscure contextual processes shaping the potential for participants to engage in research. Our reflections demonstrate the need to take seriously all decision-making throughout the research process as integral to a wider politics of method and ethics.
This article makes a theoretical contribution by looking at the rise of digital capital and its relation to the already existent social, economic, personal, political and cultural capitals (the five capitals, 5Cs from now on). It refers to the ways through which the interaction between the digital capital and the 5Cs generates inequalities in online experience (second level of digital divide), and how this new capital contributes towards the creation of the third level of digital divide, seen as the inequalities in the returning social benefits of using the Internet (van Deursen and Helsper, 2015, Ragnedda, 2017). It explains how, in order to make profitable the resources gained from the digital realm and transform them into social resources, individuals need a positive interrelation between the digital capital and social (Bourdieu, 1986, Coleman, 1990, Putnam, 1995), political (Syed and Whiteley, 1997), economic (Bourdieu, 1986), personal (Becker, 1996) and cultural capitals (Bourdieu, 1986). This interaction helps individuals to transform the digital resources into social resources and to exploit the full advantages offered by the Internet. It looks at the rise of digital capital and how its interaction with income and occupation (economic capital), education (cultural capital), ties and trust (social and personal capital), motivation and purpose of use (personal capital), and political engagement (social and political capital), affects also the third level of digital divide. It defines digital capital (first attempt ever), and the reasons why do we – as researchers of communication and its social and technological aspects – need to introduce a new capital in our theoretical toolkit. It fills a gap in the literature by proposing a nuanced definition of digital capital (as a new "bourdieusian capital") and analysing how its relationship with the 5Cs influences digital inequalities, and how it may reinforce or mitigate previous social inequalities.
'Dynamic' tariffs aim to help energy users to shift their energy-related practices, and rewards them financially when they modify when and how to use electricity in response to price fluctuations. However, its irregular and unpredictable nature makes it difficult for users to change their routine practices. The ways people interact with energy systems are complex; it involves negotiating and compromising various practices. This paper draws on 37 semi-structured interviews with householders who participated in the UK's first trial of a dynamic time-of-use tariff (dTOD) for electricity. It explores trial participants' experience with variable energy pricing. Findings from the interviews show that trial participants were willing to adapt their household practices to price changes as long as the tariff did not ruin their quality of life. Moreover, the trial was a real opportunity for people to respond to price changes. Having experienced it, participants gained confidence in performing their household practices flexibly and felt more control over energy consumption. This UK-based study has relevance to the EU context because smart grids and dynamic pricing is one of the prioritised areas in its energy infrastructure policy.
Abuse directed at visible and audible women demonstrates that cyberspace, once heralded as a new, democratic, public sphere, suffers similar gender inequalities as the offline world. This paper reports findings from a national UK study about experiences of online abuse amongst women who debate feminist politics. It argues that online abuse is most usefully conceived as a form of abuse or violence against women and girls, rather than as a form of communication. It examines the experiences of those receiving online abuse, thereby making a valuable contribution to existing research which tends to focus on analysis of the communications themselves.
Community or reassurance policing in the UK has developed concurrently with diversification and expansion of the policing family, including the broadening of volunteer opportunities beyond the traditional Special Constable and Police Support Volunteer roles. To increase capacity and capability in community-based policing, one Force introduced Volunteer Police Community Support Officers (VPCSOs) to complement that of employed PCSOs. This paper presents an exploratory discussion on a small-scale study of a previously un-researched and evolutionary area of police volunteering; evaluating the effectiveness of the VPCSO role reviewing its impact as a means of increasing community connectivity and meeting public demands for visibility policing. The introduction of VPCSOs was seen as successful by the Force involved which continues to develop the role as a useful 'policing resource'. However, challenges to success were identified, not least the uncertainty surrounding the delegation of powers to volunteers that required a change in primary legislation.
From a green criminological perspective, this article addresses the social and environmental harms associated with palm oil production in the southern part of the Colombian Pacific region. The indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities that inhabit this region are endowed with a set of specific cultural rights and collective entitlements to their lands. This should allow to challenge and in due course overcome hegemonic notions and practices of legality that exclude from meaningful debate and the ambit of juridical and political action the types of harm by which Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities are disproportionately affected. However, in the current situation there is neither substantive debate of these harms nor can Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities effectively exercise the cultural, political, and economic autonomy they were formally granted. I draw on the concept of 'neoliberal multiculturalism' (Hale, 2007) to shed light on this problematic. Desde una perspectiva basada en la criminología verde, el presente artículo aborda el caso del daño social y ambiental asociado con la industria de la palma de aceite en el Pacífico sur colombiano. Las comunidades indígenas y afrocolombianas que habitan esta zona cuentan con unos derechos culturales específicos y la titulación colectiva de sus tierras, lo cual debería permitir afrontar y superar nociones y prácticas de legalidad hegemónicas que hasta entonces habían dejado por fuera del debate y del ámbito de acción una variedad de daños sociales, culturales y ambientales de los cuales han sido víctimas. Sin embargo, en la situación actual no hay un debate sustantivo de estos daños ni un ejercicio real de la otorgada autonomía cultural, política y económica. A través el concepto de 'multiculturalismo neoliberal' de Hale (2007), busco explicar esta problemática.
Critical criminology must move beyond twentieth-century empiricist and idealist paradigms because the concepts and research programmes influenced by these paradigms are falling into obsolescence. Roger Matthews' recent work firmly advocates this position and helps to set the ball rolling. Here we argue that Matthews' attempt to use critical realist thought to move Left Realism towards an advanced position can help to put criminology on a sound new footing. However, before this becomes possible numerous philosophical and theoretical issues must be ironed out. Most importantly, critical criminology must avoid political pragmatism and adopt a more critical stance towards consumer culture's spectacle. A searching analysis of these issues suggests that, ultimately, criminology is weighed down with obsolete thinking to such an extent that to remain intellectually relevant it must move beyond both Left Realism and Critical Realism to construct a new ultra-realist position.
The Mafia's long historical pedigree in Mezzogiorno, Southern Italy, has empowered the Mafioso as a notorious, uncontested, and hegemonic figure. The counter-cultural resistance against the mafiosi culture began to be institutionalized in the early 1990s. Today, Libera Terra is the largest civil society organization in the country that uses the lands confiscated from the Mafia as a space of cultural repertoire to realize its ideals. Deploying labor force through volunteer participation, producing biological fruits and vegetables, and providing information to the students on the fields are the principal cultural practices of this struggle. The confiscated lands make the Italian experience of anti-Mafia resistance a unique example by connecting the land with the ideals of cultural change. The sociocultural resistance of Libera Terra conveys a political message through these practices and utters that the Mafia is not invincible. This study draws the complex panorama of the Mafia and anti-Mafia movement that uses the 'confiscated lands' as cultural and public spaces for resistance and socio-cultural change. In doing so, this article sheds new light on the relationship between rural criminology and crime prevention policies in Southern Italy by demonstrating how community development practice of Libera Terra changes the meaning of landscape through iconographic symbolism and ethnographic performance.
This study presents the results of a survey of 72 civil society organisations in Italy that work against the Mafia. The study investigated their perceptions of the anti-Mafia movement in four main areas: (1) government performance, (2) civil society performance, (3) the government-civil society relationship, and (4) the Mafia phenomenon and anti-Mafia policies. The study first revealed that civil society is not satisfied with the government's performance on anti-Mafia policies. Second, civil society finds its own performance relatively better than the government's, although it needs improvement. Third, civil society perceives a conflict between the government and civil society concerning anti-Mafia policies. Fourth, the Mafia-politician network is seen by civil society as the most important factor in the Mafia's power. Finally, creating a culture of lawfulness is perceived as the most influential anti-Mafia measure attainable.
Anti-semitism, racism, pro-life beliefs, and extreme Christian ideology have long been acknowledged to be a feature in far-right terrorist violence in the United States. However, what has been less acknowledged is the underpinning element of misogyny. This paper aims to reflect on why this is. First, it looks at the chronological trajectory of "common-couple violence" to "patriarchal terrorism" to "misogynistic terrorism." Even though scholarship on this form of terrorism can be traced back to the 1970s, mainstream Terrorism Studies has never fully engaged with the idea. This is echoed in a recent assertion that misogyny and violence against women is not political and therefore not terrorism. Second, this paper aims to demonstrate that this lack of engagement works in tandem with the bare minimum of acknowledgement of misogyny in the far-right. Explicitly, it argues that it is hard to see misogyny in a largely patriarchal and masculinist system. This is even more important today with the rise of Incels and the manosphere, especially in how these support the US's flirtation with Trump's misogynist and racist driven neo-fascism.
Shadowbanning is a light censorship technique used by social media platforms to limit the reach of potentially objectionable content without deleting it altogether. Such content does not go directly against community standards so that it, or the accounts in question, would be outright removed. Rather, these are borderline cases – often ones involving visual displays of nudity and sex. As the deplatforming of sex in social media has accelerated in the aftermath of the 2018 FOSTA/SESTA legislation, sex workers, strippers and pole dancers in particular have been affected by account deletions and/or shadowbanning, with platforms demoting, instead of promoting, their content. Examining the stakes involved in the shadowbanning of sex, we focus specifically on the double standards at play allowing for 'sexy' content posted by or featuring celebrities to thrive while marginalizing or weeding out posts by those affiliated with sex work.
Social harm is one of the most potentially potent and transformative concepts currently available to the social sciences. However, scholars have struggled to 'define' social harm, puzzled by enigmatic questions and tensions around the issue of how to establish clear conceptual parameters which take advantage of social harm's broader critical focus, whilst preventing the concept from becoming so nebulous that it loses all utility. This article suggests that the enigma of social harm is not simply a problem of having yet to find an adequate definition and set of conceptual parameters. Rather, the uncertainty that surrounds social harm and the proliferation of harms we are witnessing in late-capitalism are both positioned as symptomatic of far deeper social problems generated by a combination of liberalism's flawed conception of the autonomous individual subject and postmodernism's cynical individualism and dismantling of belief in any transcendent authority or ethics that can constitute what philosopher Slavoj Žižek describes as the 'Big Other'. However, such discoveries provide us with a roadmap out of zemiology's conceptual crisis. This article argues that by revisiting the moral philosophy of Alasdair Macintyre and Slavoj Žižek's ontology of the subject, we can shake off liberal-postmodernism's ethical 'culture of emotivism', abandon liberalism's a priori ethical maxims, and begin to reinstate the 'Big Other' by developing a transformative theory of the Good and human flourishing from which we can derive a clear understanding of social harm.
