Disrupting Dark Networks

Everton, Sean F.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139136877

Cited by 214 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 255 publications

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“…Our analyses are based on unique Swedish co-offending data from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention and gang membership data from the Swedish Police. We analyze the organizational patterns with the help of social network analysis, a powerful tool that has been previously applied to understanding criminal collaboration and organizational dynamics in general (Everton 2012), and Hells Angels in particular (Morselli 2009a, b).…”

Section: Aim Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Continuing along this research tradition, the pioneering works by Morselli (2009b), McGloin (2005) and Sarnecki (2001) formally introduced SNA as a method for the analysis of criminal collaboration. Later on, SNA tools were gradually applied to a wider selection of crime-related phenomena besides cooffending, such as organized crime, extremism, cybercrime (Morselli 2014), and disruption of hidden networks (Everton 2012), to name a few examples. Talking specifically about Hells Angels, Morselli (2009a) observed in his study of HAMC in Quebec that there is a widespread criminal market involving HAMC.…”

Section: Social Network Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Organizing on two wheels: uncovering the organizational patterns of Hells Angels MC in Sweden

Rostami

Mondani

2017

Trends Organ Crim

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During the last decades, Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMCs) have become a concern for crime prevention and law enforcement agencies. The general perception of OMCs is ambiguous. They are seen either as highly structured criminal organizations whose members use their motorcycle clubs for conducting sophisticated criminal enterprises, or as clubs built around the camaraderie of freedom-seeking bikers. Using unique Swedish longitudinal data on gang membership and co-offending patterns, we study the organizational dynamics of Hells Angels MC Sweden and its sub-organizations Red & White Crew and Red Devils MC. Our results reveal a complex picture. Co-offending network patterns and offense type distributions vary for each sub-organization, indicating potential differences in organizational dynamics. Red & White Crew has features that are more similar to street gangs than OMCs, and Red Devils MC has a more decentralized and chapter-based pattern of criminal collaboration than Hells Angels MC. Besides increasing our understanding of OMC collaboration structure, our results have implications for crime prevention strategies. We suggest that social responses and law enforcement efforts should take into account the heterogeneity of OMCs in order to avoid counterproductive consequences in terms of increased group cohesiveness.

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Section: Aim Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Network Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizing on two wheels: uncovering the organizational patterns of Hells Angels MC in Sweden

Rostami

Mondani

2017

Trends Organ Crim

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“…The criminal (covert) nature of the organizations behind the networks necessitates quick, nearly immediate real-time analysis and reaction for authorities to successfully counter their activities (Everton, 2012a;Dudas, 2013). Covert networks can be resilient (Milward & Raab, 2006;Everton, 2012b;Senekal, 2014), often overlap with other covert networks (Senekal 2014), and act more like traditional organizations (Raab & Milward, 2003) in their attempts to organize and exhibit structure to their activities.…”

Section: Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These difficulties and challenges have not stopped researchers and analysts from analyzing covert networks (Roberts & Everton, 2011;Everton, 2012b). Indeed, the practice dates back to countries' analyzing their enemies ' communication patterns in WWII (van Meter, 2001).…”

Section: Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social network analysis (SNA), another relational analysis technique, allows researchers to apply metrics to the data to help them make sense of visually complicated networks. They can examine the network's topology, identify central nodes or entities, detect subgroups, and locate the roles that individual nodes may play as brokers or bridges in the network (Bright et al, 2012;Everton, 2012b). Hansen, Shneiderman, and Smith (2010), Shneiderman, Preece, and Pirolli (2011), and Everton (2012b) provide additional details of social network analysis with social media.…”

Section: Relational Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Media Exploitation by Covert Networks: A Case Study of ISIS

Freeman¹,

Schroeder²,

Everton³

2017

CAIS

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Abstract:Social media has quickly become a dominant mode of professional and personal communication. Unfortunately, groups who intend to perform illegal and/or harmful activities (such as gangs, criminal groups, and terrorist groups) also use it. These covert networks use social media to foster membership, communicate among followers and nonfollowers, and obtain ideological and financial support. This exploitation of social media has serious political, cultural, and societal repercussions that go beyond stolen identities, hacked systems, or loss of productivity. There are literal life-and-death consequences of the actions of the groups behind these covert networks. However, through tracking and analyzing social media content, government agencies (in particular those in the intelligence community) can mitigate this threat by uncovering these covert networks, their communication, and their plans. This paper introduces common social media analysis techniques and the current approaches of analyzing covert networks. A case study of the Syrian conflict, with particular attention on ISIS, highlights this exploitation and the process of using social media analysis for intelligence gathering. The results of the case study show that covert networks are resilient and continually adapt their social media use and presence to stay ahead of the intelligence community.

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Emerging Trends in Social Network Analysis of Terrorism and Counterterrorism

Knoke

2015

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

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A key issue in tracking transnational terror trends is the utility of social network analysis, both as a theoretical perspective and as a methodological toolkit, for understanding and assessing terror organizations, and for developing counterterror policies and practices to detect and disrupt terror attacks. Foundational efforts were case studies of particular groups or operations, culling data from newspaper reports and court trial documents, then creating matrix files for analysis with social network computer programs. Mathematicians, game theorists, and computer scientists are dramatically expanding research beyond foundational case studies of terrorist networks. Much of their work centers on devising strategies for counterterror organizations to destabilize clandestine organizations. They develop elegant and precise mathematical models and computer algorithms, then systematically change parameters to assess capabilities of detecting and disrupting terrorist activities under varying conditions. Key issues for future network research include: conducting rigorous comparative analyses of four historical waves of modern terrorism for clues about the present and future waves; building more comprehensive, cohesive, and integrated theoretical models capable of explaining the formation, structure, and consequences of terrorist networks; developing new methods of measuring network relations among terrorists; performing more laboratory experiments as an alternative to collecting inaccessible and dangerous field observation data; and creating large, high‐quality relational datasets to test social network theories of terrorism.

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Disrupting Dark Networks

Cited by 214 publications

References 255 publications

Organizing on two wheels: uncovering the organizational patterns of Hells Angels MC in Sweden

Organizing on two wheels: uncovering the organizational patterns of Hells Angels MC in Sweden

Social Media Exploitation by Covert Networks: A Case Study of ISIS

Emerging Trends in Social Network Analysis of Terrorism and Counterterrorism

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