The phenomenon of ordinary citizens intervening or not intervening in crime and the influence of environmental and situational factors on their decision-making has been studied across diverse disciplines, employing different theoretical perspectives while focusing on distinct aspects of the phenomenon. This study seeks to lay the groundwork for the development of an integrated framework of citizen intervention in crime by systematically reviewing research from social psychology (i.e., the bystander intervention literature), sociology (i.e., the informal social control literature), criminology (i.e., the capable guardianship literature), and economics (i.e., game theory and the volunteer dilemma literature), thereby offering a multidimensional analysis of the dynamics shaping ordinary people’s involvement in protecting others against cybercrime. By focusing on environmental and situational factors, this study seeks to improve our understanding of how the environment shapes the availability and willingness of ordinary citizens to actively engage in the protection of others against cybercrime.

There is an ongoing effort by scholars of extremism to map the online spheres in which extremists exist. A neglected aspect of this mapping project is how the narratives, ideologies, and aesthetics present on these platforms are gendered. Due to this neglect of gender as a node of analysis, and the neglect of women in general, the phenomenon of online #tradwife content has also gone understudied. Tradwives believe that it is a 21st century woman’s job to become a wife and a mother, managing all aspects of domestic life in their home. In doing this role, they will be fully submissive to their husbands, present a feminine aesthetic, and take on stereotypically feminine traits, such as being caring and soft.
This research aims to contribute to both gaps in the literature by exploring #tradwife content across two understudied platforms, Pinterest and Whisper. #Tradwife content contains narratives of white supremacy, anti-feminism, and male supremacy. Through our data collection and analysis we saw consistent ideas of what constitutes tradwife lifestyle and identity across most of the dataset, but we also saw dissent. Users in our study used the hashtag #tradwife to promote white femininity, traditional homemaking skills, and a nuclear family structure. But they also disrupted this narrative, offering feminist critiques and queer subversions of the traditional tradwife ideology. This presentation explores identity construction in posts marked as #tradwife to see where boundaries are drawn and crossed over who can be a tradwife and what being a tradwife looks like.

While the body of literature on online crime and deviance continues to expand, a shared conceptualisation of cyberdeviance remains elusive. This raises questions about whether cyberdeviance should be treated and studied as a composite construct or if distinct psychological mechanisms underlie different behaviours falling under the umbrella of cyberdeviance. To address this gap, our study focuses on pathways and predictors for piracy and cyberviolence throughout adolescence. We conducted secondary data analysis using longitudinal panel data from the Korean Youth Panel Survey (KYPS), spanning the years 2003 to 2008 and including data from Korean adolescents aged 10-19 (N1 =2844; N2=3449). Employing cross-lagged panel analysis, hierarchical linear modelling, categorical principal component analysis, and latent class growth analysis, we explored various pathways for selected cyberdeviant behaviours. Our findings reveal substantial differences in trajectories, latent classes, and predictors for piracy and cyberviolence. Cyberviolence, influenced by psycho-social risk factors, exhibited an overall decline after the age of 15. Conversely, these risk factors did not predict piracy, and involvement in piracy did not decline after mid-adolescence. In light of these results, we assert that rather than investigating pathways into general cyberdeviance, recognition of multiple sub-types is crucial. Each sub-type displays unique pathways and mechanisms, necessitating targeted interventions for specific behaviours. Further, our results challenge current policies aiming at harmonisation of international cybercrime law.

Session title: The International Association for the Study of Organized Crime Presents: Cybercrime and Online Deviance

In this presentation, we will present the preliminary findings of our research about ‘online rental scam victimisation’ in the context of the student population of the University of Edinburgh. We define ‘online rental scam victimisation’ as the fraudulent extraction of funds from people navigating the online rental market. In Edinburgh, Scotland, the geographical context of our research, several instances of online rental scam victimisation of students have been reported. Therefore, we seek to understand how victims, including ‘near-victims’, defined as those who do not suffer direct financial loss but are affected in other ways, respond to this type of victimisation, specifically looking at their actions in the aftermath of the being victimised (e.g. reporting to the police, seeking support etc.) and at the practical and emotional consequences they suffer as a result. We have adopted a mixed methods approach to these research objectives, which consists of an online questionnaire disseminated to the student population of the University of Edinburgh and focus groups, where students who have been victimised or targeted as prospective victims of an online rental scam have been invited to share their experiences.