Over the last decade, there has been increasing focus by academics and
policy makers on the problem of cybercrime, defined broadly as the
misuse or manipulation of technology in the facilitation of criminal and
deviant behavior. The emergence of the World Wide Web, smartphones, and
Computer-Mediated Communications (CMCs), referred to in Europe as ICT,
or information and communications technology, profoundly affect the way
in which people interact on and off-line. Individuals who engage in
socially unacceptable or outright criminal acts increasingly utilize
technology to connect with one another in ways that are not otherwise
possible in the real world due to shame, social stigma, or risk of
detection. The use of web forums, social media like Facebook, and email
engender the formation of deviant and criminal subcultures in on-line
environments that provide justifications for offending on and off-line.
Similarly, the growth of e-commerce sites and large data-based
information on-line provide unparalleled opportunities for intellectual
property theft, data manipulation, and espionage. Various forms of
critical infrastructure that are vital to the day-to-day operations of
societies ac ross the globe, including telephony, power grids, and
financial service providers, are connected to the Internet. As a
consequence, there are now myriad opportunities for wrongdoing and abuse
through technology. For instance, the term cyberdeviance refers to a
behavior facilitated by technology that may not be illegal, though it is
outside of the formal and informal norms or beliefs of the prevailing
culture. Activities which violate codified legal statues technically
constitute crimes and are considered cybercrimes when cyberspace is used
to facilitate an offense. The intersection of cybercrime and
cyberdeviance is also related to the emerging problem of cyberterrorism,
where digital technology or computer mediated communications are used
to cause harm and force social change based on ideological or political
beliefs. Criminologists and sociologists across the world have begun to
examine these issues, though there is a high degree of segmentation and
regional/national segmentation in research. This issue is exacerbated by
the relatively small number of researchers working in this area, which
is otherwise dominated by studies of drugs, gangs, and traditional
real-world crimes. As a result, there are limited instances of
cross-national research collaboration and recognition of common themes
of research. Thus, we intend this conference to serve as a mechanism to
1) determine a common language to assess cybercrime on the basis of
different theoretical and research traditions, 2) advance an
understanding of the data sources and methodologies that can be used to
examine cybercrime victimization and offending, 3) identify
international collaborators on the basis of either topic areas,
theoretical perspectives, or methodological interests, and 4) provide a
platform for the creation of an international research consortium from
the social sciences to examine cybercrime. By bringing leading scholars
together in a single location, we expect that this conference can
revolutionize the body of cybercrime scholarship by bridging gaps in our
knowledge of existing research projects, data, and methods. In
addition, this will create an opportunity for engaged scholarship to
produce an edited volume that identifies the limitations of the current
state of the field, and highlights strategies to impro ve our
understanding of the applicability of criminological theory to
understand offending and victimization, as well as influence public
policy generally. The workshop organizers will act as volume editors and
set lines for chapters and themes to be addressed by participants.
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