Mixing politics and crime - The prevalence and decline of political discourse on the cryptomarket
Mixing politics and crime - The prevalence and decline of political discourse on the cryptomarket
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DOI：
10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.04.021
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发表时间：
2016-09-01
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
Demant, Jakob
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Munksgaard, Rasmus;Demant, Jakob
背景：恐怖海盗罗伯茨是第一个名为丝绸之路的非法毒品加密市场的创始人，他清楚地表达了他的冒险的自由主义政治动机。先前的研究认为，在加密市场毒品交易中存在或涉及一个重要的政治因素，特别是自由主义。本文的目的是调查政治话语在加密市场毒品交易讨论中的普遍性，并进一步研究这些话语在研究期间的潜在变化。方法：我们开发了一种新的话语分析概念的操作化，我们将其与主题建模相结合，使我们能够研究政治如何在加密市场论坛上表达。我们将结构主题模型应用于从加密市场论坛中提取的语料库，其中包含2011年至2015年的帖子。结果：在加密市场论坛上讨论的主题主要围绕药物的分销，包括运输和接收，产品广告和评论以及药物消费方面的讨论，如测试和消费。然而，在主要功能是协助黑市活动的论坛上，我们仍然注意到政治问题。我们确定了一个主题，它表达了一种强调个人不受干涉权的自由主义话语。随着时间的推移，我们观察到从2011年到2013年底，自由主义话语越来越流行。在2013年底——丝绸之路被占领之时——我们观察到，自由主义话语的盛行度发生了突然变化。结论：自由主义政治话语历来在加密市场论坛上盛行。丝绸之路的关闭影响了自由主义话语的盛行，这表明尽管关闭没有成功地限制加密市场经济，但它抑制了政治情绪。(C) 2016 Elsevier B.V.版权所有
Background: Dread Pirate Roberts, founder of the first cryptomarket for illicit drugs named Silk Road, articulated libertarian political motives for his ventures. Previous research argues that there is a significant political component present or involved in cryptomarket drug dealing which is specifically libertarian. The aim of the paper is to investigate the prevalence of political discourses within discussions of cryptomarket drug dealing, and further to research the potential changes of these over the timespan of the study.Methods: We develop a novel operationalization of discourse analytic concepts which we combine with topic modelling enabling us to study how politics are articulated on cryptomarket forums. We apply the Structural Topic Model on a corpus extracted from crawls of cryptomarket forums encompassing posts dating from 2011 to 2015.Results: The topics discussed on cryptomarket forums are primarily centered around the distribution of drugs including discussions of shipping and receiving, product advertisements, and reviews as well as aspects of drug consumption such as testing and consumption. However, on forums whose primary function is aiding operations on a black market, we still observe political matter. We identified one topic which expresses a libertarian discourse that emphasizes the individual's right to non-interference. Over time we observe an increasing prevalence of the libertarian discourse from 2011 to the end of 2013. In the end of 2013 - when Silk Road was seized - we observe an abrupt change in the prevalence of the libertarian discourse.Conclusions: The libertarian political discourse has historically been prevalent on cryptomarket forums. The closure of Silk Road has affected the prevalence of libertarian discourse suggesting that while the closure did not succeed in curtailing the cryptomarket economy, it dampened political sentiments. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.