Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study examines the dark information commons in Reddit, a pseudonymous social news site, in the context of illicit e-commerce communities. Unlike market forums that are hosted in the dark web, Reddit is open to users of both the clear and dark web, unwittingly serving as a gateway for potential newcomers to learn and prepare their entrance into darknet market systems. To illustrate how information commons in Reddit bolster the resilience of illicit e-commerce communication ecology, this study presents information and knowledge flows in a subreddit community dedicated to a now-defunct market called AlphaBay. This study expands the discussion of the challenges that Reddit, as information commons, encounters in governing the flow of dark knowledge.

Keywords

darknet market dark web Reddit anonymous communities illicit e-commerce

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ambrosini

Bowman

(2001). Tacit knowledge: Some suggestions for operationalization. Journal of Management Studies, 38(6), 811-829. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00260

Chugh

(2015). Do Australian universities encourage tacit knowledge transfer? In Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on knowledge discovery, knowledge engineering and knowledge management (pp. 128-135). SCITE Press.

Coleman

(2014). Hacker, hoaxer, whistleblower, spy: The many faces of anonymous. Verso books.

Collins

H. M.

(2001). Tacit knowledge, trust and the Q of sapphire. Social Studies of Science, 31(1), 71-85. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631201031001004

Collins

H. M.

(2007). Bicycling on the moon: Collective tacit knowledge and somatic-limit tacit knowledge. Organization Studies, 28(2), 257-262. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840606073759

David

D. P.

Keupp

M. M.

Mermoud

(2020). Knowledge absorption for cyber-security: The role of human beliefs. Computers in Human Behavior, 106, Article 106255.

Faraj

Shimizu

(2018). Online communities and knowledge collaborations. In Aldag

R. J.

(Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of business and management (pp. 1-20). Oxford University Press.

Faraj

von Krogh

Monteiro

Lakhani

K. R.

(2016). Special section introduction: Online community as space for knowledge flows. Information Systems Research, 27(4), 668-684. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2016.0682

Gehl

R. W.

(2018). Weaving the dark web: Legitimacy on freenet, Tor, and I2P. MIT Press.

10.

Gore

(1999). Knowledge management: the way forward. Total Quality Management, 10(4-5), 554-560. https://doi.org/10.1080/0954412997523

11.

Greenberg

(2019, May 9). Feds dismantled the dark-web drug trade—but it’s already rebuilding. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/dark-web-drug-takedowns-deepdotweb-rebound/

12.

Haldin-Herrgard

(2000). Difficulties in diffusion of tacit knowledge in organizations. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 1(4), 357-365. https://doi.org/10.1108/14691930010359252

13.

Hardin

1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248.

14.

Howells

(1996). Tacit knowledge. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 8(2), 91-106. https://doi.org/10.1080/09537329608524237

15.

Insch

G. S.

McIntyre

Dawley

(2008). Tacit knowledge: A refinement and empirical test of the academic tacit knowledge scale. Journal of Psychology, 142(6), 561-580. https://doi.org/10.3200/JRLP.142.6.561-580

16.

Kilgo

D. K.

Y. M. M.

Riedl

M. J.

Lacasa-Mas

(2018). Reddit’s veil of anonymity: Predictors of engagement and participation in media environments with hostile reputations. Social Media+ Society, 4(4), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118810216

17.

Kwon

K. H.

Priniski

J. H.

Sarkar

Shakarian

(2017, July). Crisis and collective problem solving in dark web: An exploration of a black hat forum. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society (pp. 1-5). Association for Computing Machinery.

18.

Kwon

K. H.

Shakarian

(2018). Black-hat hackers’ crisis information processing in the darknet: A case study of cyber underground market shutdowns. In Networks, hacking and media-CITAMS@30: Now and then and tomorrow (pp. 113-135). Emerald Publishers.

19.

Kwon

K. H.

Shao

(2020, July 22). Communicative constitution of illicit online trade collectives: An exploration of darkweb market subreddits. In Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Social Media and Society (pp. 65-72). Association for Computing Machinery.

20.

Leonard

Insch

G. S.

(2005). Tacit knowledge in academia: A proposed model and measurement scale. Journal of Psychology, 139(6), 495-512. https://doi.org/10.3200/JRLP.139.6.495-512

21.

Marantz

(2018, March 12). Reddit and the struggle to detoxify the Internet. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet

22.

Massanari

(2017). # Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society, 19(3), 329-346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815608807

23.

Matthew

C. T.

Sternberg

R. J.

(2009). Developing experience-based (tacit) knowledge through reflection. Learning and Individual Differences, 19(4), 530-540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2009.07.001

24.

Matias

J. N.

(2016, May). Going dark: Social factors in collective action against platform operators in the Reddit blackout. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1138-1151).

25.

Mindel

Mathiassen

Rai

(2018). The sustainability of polycentric information commons. MIS Quarterly, 42(2), 607-632. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2018/14015

26.

Moeller

Munksgaard

Demant

(2017). Flow my FE the vendor said: Exploring violent and fraudulent resource exchanges on cryptomarkets for illicit drugs. American Behavioral Scientist, 61(11), 1427-1450. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764217734269

27.

Nazim

Mukherjee

(2016). Knowledge management in libraries: Concepts, tools and approaches. Chandos Publishers.

28.

Nonaka

(1994). A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization Science, 5(1), 14-37. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.5.1.14

29.

Nonaka

Takeuchi

(1995). The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press.

30.

Nonaka

Von Krogh

(2009). Perspective—Tacit knowledge and knowledge conversion: Controversy and advancement in organizational knowledge creation theory. Organization Science, 20(3), 635-652. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1080.0412

31.

Agrawal

Rao

H. R.

(2013). Community intelligence and social media services: A rumor theoretic analysis of tweets during social crises. MIS Quarterly, 37(2), 407-426. https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2013/37.2.05

32.

Ostrom

(1990). Governing the commons. Cambridge University Press.

33.

Panahi

Watson

Partridge

(2013). Towards tacit knowledge sharing over social web tools. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(3), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-11-2012-0364

34.

Phillips

(2015). This is why we can’t have nice things: Mapping the relationship between online trolling and mainstream culture. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10288.001.0001

35.

Roberts

M. E.

Stewart

B. M.

Tingley

(2014). stm: R package for structural topic models. Journal of Statistical Software, 10(2), 1-40. https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v091i02

36.

Robertson

Diab

Marin

Nunes

Paliath

Shakarian

(2017). Darkweb cyber threat intelligence mining. Cambridge University Press.

37.

Stone

(2019, May 6). How many dark web marketplaces actually exist? About 100. CyberScoop. https://www.cyberscoop.com/dark-web-marketplaces-research-recorded-future/

38.

Sung

(2018, March 21). Reddit bans communities under policy changes targeting illegal trades. Mashable. https://mashable.com/2018/03/21/reddit-bans-communities-illegal-trades/

39.

Taylor

(2007). Tacit knowledge: Conceptualizations and operationalizations. International Journal of Knowledge Management, 3(3), 60-73. https://doi.org/10.4018/jkm.2007070104

40.

Taylor

J. R.

Robichaud

(2004). Finding the organization in the communication: Discourse as action and sensemaking. Organization, 11(3), 395-413. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508404041999

41.

Triggs

A. H.

Møller

Neumayer

(2019). Context collapse and anonymity among queer Reddit users. New Media & Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819890353

42.

Whyte

Classen

(2012). Using storytelling to elicit tacit knowledge from SMEs. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(6), 950-962. https://doi.org/10.1108/13673271211276218

Dark Knowledge and Platform Governance: A Case of an Illicit E-Commerce Community in Reddit

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References