University of Copenhagen, Department of Sociology, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark.
University of Copenhagen, Department of Sociology, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark.
Int J Drug Policy. 2019 Nov;73:255-262. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2019.03.009. Epub 2019 May 1.
From the early use of pagers and cellular phones to the darknet and smartphones, technological developments have facilitated drug deals in various ways, especially by altering time and space boundaries. Traditional drug market literature theorises about how physical markets, within which sellers act according to their risk perceptions and motivation, are led by supply, demand, and enforcement. However, there is an almost absolute research gap in understanding how this relates to digital markets and social media markets in particular. It is expected that the plasticity of technology makes digital markets highly mouldable so that the sellers are able to shape markets according to their use.
The aim of the study is to describe and understand drug dealing on social media within the structure of existing markets. We aim to do so by analysing how drug sellers' risk perceptions and motivations form and are formed by social media technology.
We conducted a three-month digital ethnographic study on Facebook and Instagram in the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), as well as 107 semi-structured qualitative interviews with sellers (2/3 of the sample) and buyers (1/3 of the sample) using online markets within the same countries.
Drug dealing on social media varies according to the structure of the chosen media and users' risk perceptions and motivations. Two market forms are suggested: 1) public digital markets (e.g., Facebook groups and Instagram) allow sellers to expand their customer lists, but the risk is quite high, while 2) private digital markets are based on one-on-one communication and demand greater knowledge but are perceived as more secure. Sellers choose which media to use and how to use them based on perceived risk and, therefore, have a significant impact on the formation of social media drug markets.
从早期的传呼机和手机到暗网和智能手机，技术发展以各种方式促进了毒品交易，尤其是改变了时间和空间的界限。传统的毒品市场文献理论认为，在物理市场中，卖家根据自己的风险感知和动机行事，受供应、需求和执法的影响。然而，对于理解这如何与数字市场，特别是社交媒体市场相关，几乎存在绝对的研究空白。预计技术的可塑性使得数字市场高度可塑，以至于卖家能够根据自己的使用方式塑造市场。
本研究旨在描述和理解社交媒体上的毒品交易在现有市场结构内的情况。我们旨在通过分析毒品卖家的风险感知和动机是如何形成的，并受到社交媒体技术的影响，来实现这一目标。
我们在五个北欧国家（丹麦、芬兰、冰岛、挪威和瑞典）的 Facebook 和 Instagram 上进行了为期三个月的数字民族志研究，以及在相同国家的在线市场中对 107 名卖家（样本的 2/3）和买家（样本的 1/3）进行了 107 次半结构化定性访谈。
社交媒体上的毒品交易根据所选择的媒体以及用户的风险感知和动机而有所不同。提出了两种市场形式：1）公共数字市场（例如 Facebook 群组和 Instagram）允许卖家扩大客户群体，但风险相当高，而 2）私人数字市场基于一对一的沟通，需要更多的知识，但被认为更安全。卖家根据感知到的风险选择使用哪种媒体以及如何使用，因此对社交媒体毒品市场的形成有重大影响。
