ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the application of netnographic practices within cryptomarkets on the Dark Web. The five studies examined demonstrate a continuity of learnings and present thick methodological description and ethical considerations raised by doing research in cryptomarkets. Cryptomarkets are online drug markets where goods and services are exchanged between parties, somewhat like eBay or Amazon, and utilise encryption technologies to evade centralised regulation and conceal user identities (Ferguson, 2017; Martin, 2014). The initial studies by Van Hout and Bingham (2013a, 2013b, 2014) provide early characterisations of drug consumerism in Silk Road. My subsequent study with Barratt and colleagues (Barratt, Lenton, Maddox, & Allen, 2016) explored the impacts of cryptomarkets on drug use trajectories. This study marks a technique pivot point around the seizure of the Silk Road marketplace towards multi-sited approaches. The subsequent studies considered examine Silk Road’s successors and focus on the performance of pseudonymous identity in high-risk transactions (Ferguson, 2017), the embedded values around drug distribution and consumption (Masson & Bancroft, 2018), and social acceptance of the drug cryptomarket environment (Kowalski, Hooker, & Barratt, 2019). The chapter demonstrates the versatility and dynamism of netnographic practices, while at the same time illustrating their transformation and subversion by the context.
