Tim Owen

New Perspectives on Cybercrime

This exciting and timely collection showcases recent work on Cybercrime by members of Uclan Cybercrime Research Unit [UCRU], directed by Dr Tim Owen at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. This book offers up-to-date perspectives on Cybercrime based upon a Realist social ontology, alongside suggestions for how research into Cybercrime might move beyond what can be seen as the main theoretical obstacles facing criminological theory: the stagnation of critical criminology and the nihilistic relativism of the postmodern and post-structuralist cultural turn. Organised into three sections; ‘Law and Order in Cyberspace’, ‘Gender and Deviance in Cyberspace’, and ‘Identity and Cyberspace’, this cutting-edge volume explores some of the most crucial issues we face today on the internet: grooming, gendered violence, freedom of speech and intellectual property crime. Providing unique new theory on Cybercrime, this book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of Criminology, Law, Sociology, Philosophy, Policing and Forensic Science, Information Technology and Journalism, in addition to professionals working within law and order agencies and the security services.

Cyber Grooming: How Biological Variables Reinforce Cognitive Distortion

This chapter is an examination and assessment of secondary research based on the development and techniques of cyber grooming. The intention here is to define the main stages of expansion from the public sphere grooming to cyber grooming by using a range of Biological Positivist, Feminist and Marxist theories. Additionally, it will attempt to identify the biological variables influencing cyber groomers, with emphasis on the power given to them by the conglomerate of cyber-stature. This approach is influenced by Owen’s (2012, 2014) Genetic-Social framework and employed in an attempt to understand a potential aetiology of cyber grooming. Additionally, there is an examination of Sykes and Matza’s (1957) principle thesis: the techniques of neutralisation and a suggested possible expansion of how these may affect Owen’s (2012, 2014) notion of ‘the biological variable’.

Criminological and Social Theory: Surveying the Contemporary Landscape

There appears to be a mounting reaction in contemporary theory against the ‘cultural turn’ and the extreme relativism of postmodern and poststructuralist theory. Recently, Hall and Winlow (2012: 8) have drawn attention to the urgent need to, ‘abandon criminology’s weirdly postmodern, self-referential gaze’. The authors cogently refer to the recent trend in criminology towards rejecting or modifying the orthodoxy that crime and social harm are the products of criminalisation and control systems. Scholars such as Owen (2012a), Reiner (2012), Wieviorka (2012), Wilson (2012), Ferrell (2012) and Yar (2012) are bringing causes and conditions back into play, and into criminological analysis. More recently, Hall and Winlow (2015) delivered what is arguably a major statement in the form of their cogent call for a ‘New Ultra-Realism’ in criminological theorising. To an extent, it could be argued that there has been a ‘return to’ sociological theory and method reflected in the work of Mouzelis (1991, 1993a, 1996, 2007), McLennan (1995), Holmwood (1996), Stones (1996), Sibeon (1996, 1997a, b, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2007), Layder (1984, 1994, 1997, 2007), Archer (1982, 1988, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000), and Owen (2006a, b, 2007a, b, 2009a, b, 2012a, b, 2014). This so-called ‘return to’ sociology has been the ‘accumulation of relatively separate intellectual moves that are a blend of renewed interest in classical sociology and in perennial explanatory problems, together with theoretical reflection arising from critical engagement with comparatively recent perspectives that range from neo-functionalism to actor-network theory’ (Sibeon 2001: 1). It is the contention here that the ‘return’ to sociology and the employment of Realist and Ultra-Realist ontologies are certainly welcome moves in the right direction, but we also need to encourage the development of a biological literacy among criminologists, and not be afraid to draw from behavioural genetics, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology in criminological analysis. What appears to unite many contemporary criminologists (Owen 2014; Hall and Winlow 2015) is a scepticism towards the knowledge-claims of relativistic postmodernism and poststructuralism, whether in the form of Lyotardian or Foucauldian relativism or in the so-called, ‘later’ forms such as the criminological theorising of Milovanovic (1996, 1997, 1999, 2013).

Something You Wish You Had Never Seen – Videos of Death & Murder on Facebook, You Tube and Other Media Platforms

The sudden intrusion upon social media of videos depicting atrocity and murder has become more prevalent over the last couple of years, but why is this so? Does this constitute another (although extreme) form of spam? Is there also a social engineering element to this, in that it will attract people’s morbid curiosity and induce outrage, all of which results in computer traffic in the competition for our attention on the Internet?

Silenced by Free Speech: How Cyberabuse Affects Debate and Democracy

The early days of the Internet promised much. Posting online seemed to offer a freedom from expectation and prejudice. In the words of the New Yorker cartoon, on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. We believed nobody knew your gender, age or race either. Your beauty or lack of it was of no account, your mind was disembodied, pure spirit, freed from the hidebound judgements of society.

Codification and Application of the Genetic-Social Framework

The Genetic-Social sensitising device employed in this book has been used in earlier forms to suggest a ‘way forward’ beyond post-postmodern relativism, in tandem with its application to the study of human biotechnology in the work of Owen (2006b, 2009a) and applied by the author to several other areas of interest such as masculinities, Globalization, ageing, notions of ‘trust’ and professional power, among others. Notably, the framework has been recently applied to criminological theory in general in the work of Owen (2014), to ‘Virtual Criminology’ in the work of Owen and Owen (2015) and to ‘Cyber Violence’ in the work of Owen (2016). Here, it is applied to the study of crime and criminal behaviour with an emphasis upon behaviour within cyberspace in much greater depth. To recap, the ontologically flexible framework is an example of metatheory. It relies upon methodological generalisations as opposed to substantive generalisations, and multi-factorial analysis, preparing the ground for further theoretical and empirical investigation involving large-scale synthesis. The intention now is to show how the framework may be applied and how it may inform criminological theorising, particularly but not exclusively in relation to cybercrime, and first we must turn to what criminological theorising must avoid. This entails an examination of the latest incarnation of the Genetic-Social, metatheoretical framework in relation to the ‘cardinal sins’ of illegitimate reasoning. It is argued here that all these identified forms of theoretical reasoning have severe limitations for criminological theorising.

Cyber Vigilantism – How the Cyber Mob Behaves

Social media can be seen as a democratising force in which everyone can have their say and each person has an opinion which they can voice to the whole world. So when a person encounters something which he or she feels is wrong, or feels that an injustice has been done, then the person can take to the Internet and voice his or her outrage. But what if this went too far and calls of outrage mutated into calls for ‘justice’ outside the law? This is the problem of cyber vigilantism in which the sentiments of the mob sweep across social media. It would appear that the speed of communication has overtaken the ability of some to think objectively.

Trolling, the Ugly Face of the Social Network

Much of modern social interaction takes place using digital communications, using the Smartphone and tablet devices which have seemingly become ubiquitous to our modern generation. As will all interactions between individuals, not all will be pleasant or tasteful; some may be rude and offensive, possibly even harmful to the person on the receiving end. The fact that this takes place is not unusual, it happens often enough in the ‘offline’ world, but it is scale and reach of such activities which should give us pause for thought. The question we must now ask is ‘what are the unique circumstances which make online social media particularly ripe for incivility?’ and ‘how should we categorise it?’ Also discussed here will be motivations and the theories surrounding the aetiology of this behaviour. This chapter will discuss the motivations of trolling in relation to Nietzsche’s concepts of ‘resentiment’, ‘slave morality’ and ‘nihilism’ and draw upon the concept of ‘causal probability’ in order to shed new light upon this activity.

Biology and Cybercrime: Towards a Genetic-Social, Predictive Model of Cyber Violence

In what follows, an updated version of Owen’s (2014) Genetic-Social, meta-theoretical framework which has been employed in over 20 publications is briefly outlined and certain meta-constructs are ‘applied’ to the study of online violence. On 24 September 2015, the International Telecommunications Union, an agency of the United Nations, published a report on ‘Cyber Violence Against Women and Girls: A World-Wide Wake-Up Call’. The report, which at the time of writing (November 2015) has been formally retracted, appeared to define ‘cyber violence’ in terms of ‘online trolling’ and ‘online hate-speech’ targeted at women and girls. It is contended here that we need to conceptualise ‘cyber violence’ in broader terms. Cyber violence can be regarded as behaviour by an actor which takes place online and which is hostile and aggressive, and which may also be offensive, indecent, obscene or of a menacing character. The victims can be of any background with regard to age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality or social class.

Neuroscience and Cybercrime

In this chapter, we examine Owen and Owen’s (2015) metaconstruct of neuro-agency and developments in neuroscience concerning notions of free-will, embodied cognition, neuroplasticity and neuroethics in relation to cybercrime. The metaconstruct, neuro-agency is employed in Genetic-Social metatheoretical reasoning as an acknowledgement of the neural influence upon human free-will. It is contended here that it is timely and essential to acknowledge recent developments in the neuroscience of free-will and to abandon the ‘old’ term, ‘agency’. Whilst, a neural influence upon human free-will is acknowledged here, it is not argued that free-will is an illusion, as has been suggested by the hardline, determinist work of Eagleman (2001). The suggestion here is that the most convincing model of free-will, and the one which has played the most significant role in the development of Owen and Owen’s (ibid) notion of neuro-agency, is the ‘soft compatabilist’ model of free-will offered by Dennett (1981) in which a belief in both determinism and free-will is not seen as logically inconsistent. In what follows, we first examine selected examples from the literature on the subject of the ‘neuroscience of free-will’.