The research group Crime, Control and Culture, of the Department of Sociology in Lund, welcomes Silje Anderdal Bakken from Oslo University.

Illegal drug markets on social media: Locally bound actors on global platforms

The presentation is based on Silje’s Ph.D. project “Drug dealing on social media: A sociological study of risk, trust, and capital in illegal drug markets” from 2018-2022, which was based on a cross-national study in the Nordic countries, called Nordic Drug Dealing on Social Media (NDDSM). The data consists of three months of social media ethnography and 106 semi-structured qualitative interviews with drug market participants (sellers and buyers).

The focus of the presentation will be on how the selling of illegal drugs in online platforms is formed by the online context, as well as by locally-bounded factors. Social media drug dealing is shaped by both the digital context and the physical, local contours of the market. Despite social media platforms being global – there are important local differences in the ways drug dealing interactions takes place on these. On one side, platform layouts dictate sellers’ self-presentations and marketing options, while, on the other, locally based risk perceptions and cultural influences shape sellers’ online behaviors like risk taking and who to trust. The use of digital communication platforms also changes illegal drug markets more broadly by introducing new sets of skills, which further opens the way for new actors to enter these illegal markets, without the right street culture or social network.

Seminar-link

Staff of the Department of Sociology will receive the seminar-link via email. If you are not member of staff and would like to attend the event please email Sébastien Tutenges sebastien [dot] tutenges [at] soc [dot] lu [dot] se no later than 48 hours before the start of the seminar to receive a link to the seminar.

Go to soc.lu.se/en/crime-control-and-culture to learn more about the Department of Sociology research group: Crime, Control, and Culture.