Discussing illicit drugs in public internet forums: Visibility, stigma, and pseudonymity.

Barratt, Monica

Access Status

Fulltext not available

Authors

Barratt, Monica

Date

2011

Type

Conference Paper

Metadata

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Citation

Barratt, Monica. 2011. Discussing illicit drugs in public internet forums: Visibility, stigma, and pseudonymity, in Kjeldskov, J. and Paay, J (ed), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies, Jun 29 2011, pp. 159-168. Brisbane: Association for Computing Machinery.

Source Title

C&T '11. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Communities and Technologies

Source Conference

Fifth International Conference on Communities and Technologies

Additional URLs

http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2110000.2103376

ISBN

978-1-4503-0824-3

School

National Drug Research Institute (Research Institute)

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/46910

Collection

Curtin Research Publications

Abstract

It has been claimed that people discuss their own illicit drug use online because anonymity allows them to avoid the legal and social risks of identifying themselves as drug users. Discourses around the risks, strategies and management of online drug discussion were produced by interviewing 26 ‘party drug’ users who reported participating in internet forums where drugs were discussed. Three factors influenced the extent to which drug forum users discussed their own drug use in public internet forums: perceived visibility, perceived legal risk and social stigma, and perceived effectiveness of pseudonymity. Implications for internet research with drug users are discussed.