@inproceedings{2b53e445ff8c43738e71631ccac9970b,
title = "Knowledge sharing network in a community of illicit practice: A cybermarket subreddit case",
abstract = "Often neglected in the literature about communities of practice is the fact that online knowledge-sharing communities thrive among illicit collectives whose activities are stigmatized or outlawed. This paper focuses on a knowledge-sharing community of users who engage in illegal practices by examining the ways in which the community's network structure changes when a high-stakes, uncertain event-the July 2017 shutdown of the dark web market Alphabay-occurs. This study compares the discussion network structures in the subreddit r/AlphaBay during pre-shutdown days (the “routine” period) and shutdown days (the “market defect” period) and offers a content analysis of the knowledge and resources shared by users during these periods. Several differences were observed: (a) the network structure changed such that the network size grew while becoming more centralized; (b) new crisis-specific players emerged; (c) types of knowledge shared during the market defect period was qualitatively different from the routine period.",
author = "Kwon, {K. Hazel} and Weiwen Yu and Steve Kilar and Chun Shao and Kailey Broussard and Thomas Lutes",
note = "Funding Information: This research was sponsored by the Army Research Office and was accomplished under Grant Number W911NF-19-1-0066. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Office or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation herein. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.; 53rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2020 ; Conference date: 07-01-2020 Through 10-01-2020",
year = "2020",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences",
publisher = "IEEE Computer Society",
pages = "2731--2740",
editor = "Bui, {Tung X.}",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2020",
}