Understanding the darknet as a location and tool for social science research / Angus Bancroft.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bancroft, Angus, author.

Series:

SAGE research methods: doing research online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dark Web--Research.

Dark Web.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

London : SAGE Publications, Ltd., 2022.

Summary:

Darknets are online spaces with unique characteristics of anonymisation and privacy. They are host to a range of self-governing user communities. This guide focuses on the Tor darknet and research on illicit drug markets that use it. It relates the history of Tor to the shifting priorities of the platform society. It sets out the history of Tor as a privacy infrastructure and shows how it combines different technologies and principles in order to promote privacy and autonomy. It proposes different questions that can be asked in this setting, relating Tor's development to the sociology and anthropology of infrastructures. It frames Tor as the site of competing concepts of privacy. It takes a key case, that of the use of Tor services to sell illicit drugs. It outlines different approaches to data collection through and about the darknet depending on the purpose of the research and the kind of technical skills and capacities needed to use them effectively. It also discusses the ethical challenges involved and concludes that research in this domain challenges some epistemological and normative claims often implicit in digital methods research.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (SAGE Publications Ltd, viewed March 30, 2023).

ISBN:

1-5296-0924-0

9781529609240

OCLC:

1335037499