Hybrid Harms - Crime, Harm, and Risk in a Digitally-Mediated Society

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on Emergent and Current Issues

Abstract

To expand the conceptual understanding of harm in a digitally-mediated world, I blend ethnographic research and literature from Science, Technology and Society studies (STS), cybersecurity studies, and related perspectives. The resulting theoretical model joins real-world and digital spaces into a hybrid model that can capture complex processes that lead to harm, and those harms that may persist even if criminal behavior is absent. To demonstrate the utility of the concept, I reframe recent examples of exploitation and radicalization where neither real-world events or digital interaction predominate, but the combination causes the harm.

Author

• Andrew Burns, Louisiana State University