Cyber Crime Literature Review

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Cyber crime has increased significantly as the Internet became ubiquitous. This increased research in the field of sociology and criminology to understand this new field of crime, which is very different compared to traditional crimes. However, sociologists and criminologists try to apply traditional sociological theories to explain cyber crime. This literature review examines the reliability of Routine Activity Theory (RAT) to explain victimization of cyber crime in relation to activities online and offline. The authors of each article have similar research agendas that lead towards questioning the applicability of RAT to the rates of cyber crime victimization but differ in the specificity of the question they ask. Holt and Bossler (2009)…show more content…
Sticca et al (2012) conceptualize interpersonal activities as anti-social behaviour, frequent online communication, and experience with cybervictimization and intrapersonal characteristics as gender, moral disengagement, empathetic concern, and global self-esteem. Conversely, van Wilsem (2011) operationalizes threat victimization, non-domestic routine activities (shopping, going out with friends, etc.) and digital routine activities (emailing, instant messaging, etc.) and the frequency ranging from never (or once a year) to more than once a week. The control variables that he set up were sex, age, marital status, income, urban or rural area, and education level. Ngo and Paternoster (2011) have identical control variables and operationalization of other activities, but further conceptualize self-control based on statements to which they agreed or disagreed from five options that varied from disagree strongly to agree strongly. The concepts were operationalized by asking the frequency of the activity (options range from never to daily) and were not only binary (Sticca et al, 2012; van Wilsem, 2011; Ngo and Paternoster, 2011). These articles point out that self-control has a significant role in influencing the rate of victimization due to its connection with the frequency of activities. This is one of the most, if not most, important steps of researching and as this field is new, these articles made the terms simple to

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