Community and Practice in Two Generations of Online Illicit Drugs Discussions
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Community and practice in two generations of online illicit drugs discussions A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities. 2020 P. O. Enghoff School of Social Sciences, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. 8 Other acknowledgements .................................................................................... 9 The author .............................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 1. Introduction ..................................................................................... 10 1.1 Background ........................................................................................... 11 1.2 Summary of thesis contents ................................................................ 19 1.2.1 Literature review .......................................................................... 20 1.2.2 Research design ............................................................................. 24 1.2.3 Research papers ............................................................................ 28 1.2.4 Discussion ...................................................................................... 31 Chapter 2. Literature review ............................................................................. 34 2.1 Three generations of online illicit drugs discussions ...................... 36 2.1.1 Usenet newsgroups ...................................................................... 36 2.1.2 World Wide Web discussion forums ......................................... 38 2.1.3 Mainstream social media platforms ........................................... 39 2.2 Accounting for the value of online illicit drugs discussions ......... 41 2.2.1 Online health information seeking............................................. 41 2.2.2 Technologies of discursive resistance ........................................ 44 2.2.3 Social learning and harm reduction on the internet ................ 47 2.2.4 Online social and cultural environments .................................. 54 2.3 Communities of practice and illicit drugs discussions ................... 58 2.3.1 Domain ........................................................................................... 60 2.3.2 Community .................................................................................... 63 2.3.3 Practice ........................................................................................... 67 2.3.4 Learning how to do drugs better ................................................ 69 2.4 Summary of literature review ............................................................ 71 2 Chapter 3. Research design ............................................................................... 73 3.1 Methodology in previous research ................................................... 74 3.2 Why a quantitative methodology?.................................................... 76 3.3 Ethical considerations ......................................................................... 79 3.3.1 Public or private data?................................................................. 80 3.3.2 Preservation of anonymity ......................................................... 81 3.3.3 Preservation of online environments ........................................ 83 Chapter 4. Data ................................................................................................... 87 4.1 Data collection strategy ...................................................................... 88 4.2 Bluelight ................................................................................................ 89 4.3 Reddit .................................................................................................... 91 4.4 Subforum selection .............................................................................. 93 4.5 Limitations of the data set .................................................................. 95 Chapter 5. Methods ............................................................................................ 99 5.1 Social network analysis of structural features .............................. 101 5.1.1 Network representation of the data ........................................ 102 5.1.2 Graph theoretical operationalisation....................................... 105 5.2 Digital text analysis of semantic features ....................................... 110 5.2.1 Document representation and clustering ............................... 112 5.2.2 Cluster representation ............................................................... 116 Chapter 6. Research papers ............................................................................ 120 6.1 Research paper #1 .............................................................................. 120 6.2 Research paper #2 .............................................................................. 122 6.3 Research paper #3 .............................................................................. 124 6.4 Research paper #4 .............................................................................. 126 Chapter 7. Research paper #1 ......................................................................... 128 Chapter 8. Research paper #2 ......................................................................... 163 Chapter 9. Research paper #3 ......................................................................... 206 Chapter 10. Research paper #4 ....................................................................... 264 Chapter 11. Discussion .................................................................................... 328 3 11.1 The social embedding of the online development and dissemination of illicit drugs practices ...................................................... 331 11.1.1 Community in online illicit drugs discussions ....................... 332 11.1.2 Community of practice in online illicit drugs discussions ... 334 11.1.3 The relation of community and practice ................................. 336 11.1.4 Summary ...................................................................................... 340 11.2 The social environment of illicit drugs discussions on reddit ..... 340 11.2.1 A larger and more diverse user base ....................................... 341 11.2.2 A different type of participation ............................................... 343 11.2.3 Negotiating a community ethos on reddit .............................. 348 11.2.4 Summary ...................................................................................... 349 11.3 The impact of reddit on illicit drugs trends ................................... 350 11.3.1 Scope of impact ........................................................................... 350 11.3.2 Magnitude of impact .................................................................. 352 11.3.3 Nature of impact ......................................................................... 354 11.3.4 Summary ...................................................................................... 362 11.4 Summary and future perspectives .................................................. 363 11.4.1 Summary of contribution .......................................................... 365 11.4.2 Future perspectives .................................................................... 367 11.5 Methodological perspectives ............................................................ 375 11.5.1 Methodological limitations ....................................................... 377 References .......................................................................................................... 386 Total word count: 85,803 (excludes preliminary pages, reference lists, appendices and tables). 4 Abstract This thesis examines the recent migration of online illicit drugs discussions from specialist discussion forums to mainstream social media platforms in order to reassess the current impact of online platforms on global illicit drugs trends. Specialist discussion forums have played an important role in the indigenous development and dissemination of illicit drugs practices since the 1990s, especially as platforms for online harm reduction. The mainstream social media platforms where online illicit drugs discussions are taking place today entail very different online environments with many more participants, and new research is thus needed in order to determine their impact on global illicit drugs trends. To address this, this thesis develops an analytical framework for comparing the development and dissemination of illicit drugs practices on two online discussion platforms – reddit, a mainstream social media platform where illicit drugs discussions have proliferated dramatically during the past decade, and Bluelight, an important example of the older, specialist discussion forums which were previously the main locations of such discussions. A quantitative methodology based on social network analysis and unsupervised learning is used to compare the social structure and topical contents of an extensive data set of user submissions gathered from these platforms. Structural and semantic features of this