Social Media and Crime: A Comprehensive Analysis of Cyber Threats

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of cyber crimes perpetrated through social media, examining the application of socialization theories to understand the behavior of cyber criminals and the impact on victims, especially women, through an intersectional critical analysis. The essay explores the rising criminal activity in digital communities and its challenges to the criminal justice system, including crimes like cyber-terrorism, identity theft, and cyberbullying. It discusses the broader implications of cyber crime, including the psychological impact on victims, and proposes resolutions to mitigate these threats. The essay also examines the role of social learning and social control theories in explaining criminal behavior and the importance of security measures and vigilance in preventing cybercrimes. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the social issue, analyze its depth, and offer insights into effective strategies for prevention and mitigation.

Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRIME
Social Media and Crime
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Executive Summary:
This paper intends to focus on the in depth analysis of cyber crimes and intends to explore all the
aspects of crimes attempted through social media. The research paper applies socialization
theories to reason the behavioural act of a cyber criminal and it endeavours to put forth the
impacts of such crimes on victims especially the women with a critical analysis of the
intersectionality. This research paper concludes with the resolutions to avoid being a victim of
such a crime and also how to hold back this crime’s uprising.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Social Media and Crime:.................................................................................................................3
Analysis of Cyber Crime:............................................................................................................4
Application of theories:...............................................................................................................5
Broader Implications of the Social Issue:....................................................................................6
Intersectional Critical Analysis:..................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
References:....................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction:
More than 20 million people of Canada actively use social media which is why it is not a
surprise when criminal activity is rising in digital communities and poses new challenges for
criminal justice system (Perrin, 2019). The Supreme Court in Canada states that “the rate of
technological change over the past decade has fundamentally altered the social context in which
certain crimes are occurring and social media networks have given unprecedented access to
potential victims and avenues for offending.” (Perrin, 2019, p.p 4) Cyber crimes are a growing
risk around the world where computer or internet is the medium of the crime like hate spam,
hacking or child pornography and more. Any kind of personal information or any confidential
information which is hacked, when used to exploit a person or a company is illegal. Apart from
crimes like bank information theft, unauthorized computer access or identity theft, there is a
rising threat of a more serious crime which is Cyber-terrorism. This paper intends to comprehend
the social issue with reasoned arguments and analyse the depth of the intersectionality with the
endeavour to recognise broader implication. The paper also attempts to throw light on the
proposed resolutions to the social issue that could hold back the emerging threat.
Social Media and Crime:
The popularity of some social media sites has made communication downright easy and
instantaneous. The collection of information; be it personal or confidential has been made easy
by the internet; the ease of interaction is taken advantage of, by the high-tech hackers. The
innocent people are exploited and made a victim of phishing and social engineering which
eventually leads to theft. Sites like Facebook are full of such scam artists who perform an acute

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connection of social engineering, phishing and vandalism of property. With the advent of
technology, the limits of social media crimes are also rising, one such rise being the emergence
of the crime, cybercasing. The victim is tracked through geo-tagging and the location details of
the victim are then used for questionable purposes. The government of Canada has introduced
several of the cyber crimes as annotated Criminal Code which is dealt with legal actions; some of
these cyber crimes include participating in terrorist activity, sexual interference, criminal
harassment, extortion, promoting hatred, luring a child and more. Each and every crime
mentioned has their own case law and legal actions are taken in accordance. The US has to suffer
a cost of 100 billion dollars annually due to cyber crime, making any social networking site
account unsafe (Cobb, 2019). The cause behind the occurrence of cyber crime is primarily
because of the usage of incompetent security software and the lack of proper servers with
firewalls and anti-virus. There are attempts to minimize the effects of the cyber crime through
actions that are stringent and through strict rules and regulations. There are proper capital
punishments and sentences allocated to the person who is accused guilty; however there is still
no obvious statistics to prove the permanent doom of cyber crime. Since the whole world is
connected through World Wide Web, cyber crime approaches as the main concern and it is
shocking to know that this concern is not a recent phenomenon.
Analysis of Cyber Crime:
Cyber crime possess a great threat to the country, the threat is so severe that every
individual’s chances of being the victim to a cybercrime are increasing per day. As per a survey
of cyber security issues, it was found that 9 out of 10 residents of Canada were in agreement to
the fact that social media crime is a matter of internal security (Perrin, 2019). The danger is so
clear that people tend to place the threats of social media crime equivalent to the threats of

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human trafficking, terrorism and more. A disappointing study revealed that less than half of the
population of Canada agrees that the authorities and the police are doing enough to prevent
individuals from being victimized by cybercrime. It must be noted that unlike any physical
crime, cybercrime is hard to tackle as the physical crime takes place in a physical space whereas
the social media crime is bound to take place in a cyberspace; this tackling in cyberspace
requires serious skills which is of high priority. The same survey showed that the government of
Canada tends to work better on other issues like corruption; human trafficking and more, much
better than the government tries to eradicate cybercrime. Not only Canada, the US is also
responding the same way as the Canadians when it comes to the concern gap around the cyber
crime of the government.
The ESET Cyber security Barometer shows that when asked about the biggest concern
about being a victim of a cyber crime, 76.8% of the people replied that they are more threatened
of being a victim of identity theft; other 76% are afraid of bank fraud and least being afraid of
getting blackmailed because the hackers are in control of their device (Cobb, 2019, p.p 8). More
of the survey reported how frequently was the people threatened on cyber space and the results
confirm the reason why Canadians think of cybercrime as one of the biggest problem. Some
crimes are way worse than others since the impact that these crimes implement sometimes effect
the psychological mindset of the victim.
Application of theories:
The primary and secondary forms of socialization make strong impact on the psyche of
an individual right from his/her childhood. The effects of socialization are highly influential on
an individual’s way of operating in a society. The process of socialization, when not received
properly; bring detrimental effects in an individual. It may be said that the lack of such

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socialization can be a reason behind the cyber criminals’ intentions (Leukfeldt & Majid, 2016).
The socialization theory is useful in terms of criminality within a society especially in the
modern era.
Another behavioral theory is the theory of Social Learning which was proposed by
Bandura. It is a cognitive process which states that learning is done by observing and imitating
others along with the realization of rewards and punishments through the process of vicarious
reinforcements. This theory holds a significant place in making a long lasting impact on the
arena of criminology (Akers, 2009, p.p 15). With various revisions and re-revisions it was stated
that the urge to attempt a crime is learned via interactions and behaviors of intimate persons.
Social learning provides a distinct notion that behavior is influenced by human agency, peers and
social forces. The negative side of the social learning theory aggravates the tendency to attempt a
crime and the possible cause behind the urge to exploit other people or blackmailing over cyber
space.
In contrast to the above two theories that possibly explain why people get offended and
attempt to harm other individuals, Social Control Theory actually explains the reason behind an
individual’s urge to obey rules (Smith-Lovin & David, 2016). This theory gives the explanation
of the general behavior expectation of a society by emphasizing on the development process that
a person experiences from his childhood. The occurrence of crime or the tendency to deviate
from the moral path of humanity is due to the presence of inadequate constraints. The essence of
social control theory is the conformity by which people are taught to be socialized so that they
can accept the rules. The engagement in delinquency is due to the negative relationships and the
freedom from social constraints.

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Broader Implications of the Social Issue:
Wherever, there is a weakness, the cyber criminal are likely to exploit the area and take
advantage of it. Falling in trap of a phishing scam takes a long time to come out, as the criminal
gets access to the bank account details and personal information, it takes months even years to
fix it right again. It costs a large sum of money behind security costs to save the data from
hackers, yet it is seen that there occurs an immense monetary loss from cyber crime. Most
terrible impact of cybercrime comes through cyber-terrorism. Section 83.18(3) of the charter
provides a list of behaviors which determine the extent of participation of the individual in a
terrorist activity and if proven guilty the act does not violate any kind of freedom of expression
or justice of the accused (Perrin, 2019, p.p 6). Another intense impact of cyber crime is through
the crime of sexual interference, which puts a long term traumatic psychological impact on the
victim. The act of stalking, or luring a child into sexual acts, is some of the inhuman crimes that
affect the victim in both physical and mental ways. In section 172.1(1) (b) of the Criminal Code,
the accused that is found guilty of luring a child can be sentenced to legal punishments (Perrin,
2019, p.p 18). Even the act of Voyeurism by means of recording anything indecent without the
consent of the person and using it to exploit the person is not tolerable; it leaves a sad impact on
the victim, who is possibly left into the space of trauma for the rest of his/her life. The acts of
criminal harassments, uttering threats, spreading hatred are also some cybercrimes that leave an
impact on the victim and are punishable by law. Cyber bullying is another facet of cyber crime
that has destroyed lives, especially young ones. Just like bullying is a punishable offence, cyber
bullying is no different. The act of bullying someone through social media is equally painful and
harassing as the act of bullying in physical space. Young teenagers are seen to fall in as the
victim as it becomes very difficult to get them out of the harassment and lead a normal life.

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Intersectional Critical Analysis:
It is evident from many surveys as well as reports that the intersectional criminal
approach to social media crime is higher than others (Potter, 2015). The sexual interference, or
child pornography or voyeurism and so on has victims’ that are feminine. Apart from the sexual
facet of cyber crime, the act of identity theft, blackmailing, phishing and other crimes also have
females as the victims, in fact in large numbers. Women tend to get cyber bullied more and the
impact that falls on women end up in serious consequences as compared to men. Moreover it has
also been studied that men tend to get deviated more and become cyber criminals and misuse
social media to unlimited extent. This may be because of the Social Control theory, which works
effectively on the feminine class- because of the prevalence of patriarchal dominance- as females
tend to stay in control thus they do not deviate from the norms and socialized behavior.
There are ways to resolve the problem of social media crime irrespective of gender or
caste or anything, since the threat of cyber crime affects equally to all victims. Installing a good
antivirus into the system and device helps till a large extent (Haukilehto, 2019). Everyone should
be judicious while sharing one’s identity, and being vigilant towards suspicious activities online
and being careful while sharing files containing confidential or personal information would hold
back the threat of being victimised. Most important of all, one should have a good
communication with the cyber crime law authorities of their city or state and inform any
irregular activities that can possess threat to any one in particular.
Conclusion:
Along with other global threats, social media crime is growing at a noticeable pace and it
needs attention from the authorities. It can be concluded that socialization is important in

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nurturing a character and learning the norms of behavior of a society which depicts the future
possible criminal mindset of an individual. There is an utmost need of constraint from an early
age to make one individual aware of the way of behavior that is normal within a society and
deflect from the path of deviation. The ones who did not receive such process of socialization
from their family or the environment they lived in; they have higher chances of deviating
towards criminal paths, among which cyber crime is the easiest way. Even a little act of stalking
which may seem harmless can end up in serious consequences, thus every facet of cyber crimes
are punishable by law. There are easy resolutions to avoid being victimized by a cyber criminal
and all the victims especially women since they are the ones who fall in traps more than others,
should be in contact with the cyber law authorities to save themselves from any unfortunate and
deadly consequences.

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References:
Akers, R. (2009). Social Learning and Social Structure (1st ed., pp. 15-24). London: Transaction
Publishers (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315129587).
Haukilehto, T. (2019). Improving Cyber Security awareness: Health, social services and regional
government reform in South Ostrobothnia
(https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/166501/Thesis_final.pdf?
sequence=2)
Cobb, S. (2019). ESET CYBERSECURITY BAROMETER 2018 [Ebook] (pp. 8-11). ESET.
Retrieved from
https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ESET_BAR
OMETER_USA.pdf
Leukfeldt, E. R., & Yar, M. (2016). Applying routine activity theory to cybercrime: A theoretical
and empirical analysis. Deviant Behavior, 37(3), 263-280.
(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01639625.2015.1012409)
Perrin, B. (2019). Social Media Crime in Canada: Annotated Criminal Code, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-
46 [Ebook] (2nd ed., pp. 4-22). Faculty Publishers. Retrieved from
https://commons.allard.ubc.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1486&context=fac_pubs
Potter, H. (2015). Intersectionality and criminology: Disrupting and revolutionizing studies of
crime. Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203094495)

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Smith-Lovin, L., & Heise, D. R. (2016). Analyzing social interaction: Advances in affect control
theory. Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315025773)