Capital in illegal online drug markets: How digital capital changes the cultural environment of drug dealing
| Published date | 01 August 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806221143365 |
| Author | Silje Anderdal Bakken,Atte Oksanen,Jakob Demant |
| Date | 01 August 2023 |
Capital in illegal online drug
markets: How digital capital
changes the cultural
environment of drug dealing
Silje Anderdal Bakken
University of Oslo, Norway; University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Atte Oksanen
University of Tampere, Finland
Jakob Demant
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Digital societies demand technological competence, including for actors in illegal activity.
Inspired by Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital and related criminological concepts such
as street capital, this study analyses digital capital as a wider concept relating to digital
drug markets that capture both technological and cultural competences. We pursue
this empirically via interview data (N=107) on social media and darknet drug markets.
The overall need for digital competence erodes the earlier divide in drug markets based
on either subculture or networks. The need to be familiar with mainstream techno-
logical tools and behaviours connects digital drug markets to more general cultural com-
petencies. Consequently, illegal activities become connected with mainstream cultural
capital because both fields value the same competencies.
Corresponding author:
Silje Anderdal Bakken, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law,University of Oslo,, Kristian Augustus
Gate 17, 0164, Oslo, Norway.
Email: s.a.bakken@jus.uio.no
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2023, Vol. 27(3) 421–438
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13624806221143365
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
Keywords
illicit drug markets, illegal drugs, capital, culture, technology, social media, Bourdieu, street capital,
social network, internet
Introduction
Internet and digitalization play massive roles in modern societies (Fuchs, 2007; Graham
and Dutton, 2019; Keipi et al., 2017). Not only do they affect forms of communication in
everyday life for most people, but the digital space also provides new possibilities for
illegal behaviour (Wall, 2007; Yar and Steinmetz, 2019), such as internet-based
markets for trading cannabis and other illegal drugs (Barratt and Aldridge, 2016;
Demant et al., 2019; Martin, 2014; Moyle et al., 2019). However, digital communication
platforms not only facilitate new ways of doing traditional illegal activities, they also
change these activities in a more general sense by being an embedded part of people’s
everyday lives (Lane, 2019; Stratton et al., 2017). For example, much of today’s commu-
nication happens through written messages, images and videos, which set certain expec-
tations for how people present themselves and document their or others’activities, both
online and offline –legally and illegally.
Similar to many other social activities today, drug dealing takes place in a digital era in
which communicating through online digital platforms, such as the various forms of
social media, is the norm. Already a decade ago, a massive change occurred in the use
of technology to trade illegal drugs. In the beginning, online drug dealing took place
on the open internet, where simple searches resulted in a selection of websites featuring
drugs, mainly selling ‘spice’or ‘legal highs’(Hall and Antonopoulos, 2016; Hillebrand
et al., 2010). At that same time, so-called cryptomarkets arose (Martin, 2014). Encryption
and anonymity are central within these markets, and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and
Monero are used as means of payment. The latest development concerns the use of
various phone applications to sell drugs. Some sales are made openly, for example on
Facebook and Instagram, whereas others occur in a more hidden fashion on Wickr and
Snapchat (Demant et al., 2019; Moyle et al., 2019). These types of hybrid digital drug
dealing seem to be gaining more traction (Childs et al., 2020), and COVID-19 has
boosted this tendency even further (Groshkova et al., 2020).
The growing use of online communication in illegal drug markets disrupts some of its
fundamental structures for communication by changing the context of social interaction.
Sellers and buyers now need to market themselves and their drugs through text, images
and emojis in a global context with high competition where various market types merge.
Despite a steadily growing body of empirical studies, there is a lack of necessary theor-
etical explanations and understandings of how the use of digital communication plat-
forms for interaction affects these markets as social spaces. Most of the existing
theories have explained how the online setting changes, for example, trust systems
(Hardy and Norgaard, 2016; Munksgaard, 2021; Nurmi et al., 2017). Now, there is a
need for a theoretical framework that discusses a wider aspect of online drug markets.
We suggest that such thinking takes the onset in a wide premise of a space where new
possibilities and restrictions through technology form traditional, physical drug market
values.
422 Theoretical Criminology 27(3)
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