Ja’Qwah Lewis
Dr. Leigh Armistead
CYSE 201s
17 March 2023
The Emerging Trends in Cybercrime awareness in Nigeria
When taking in cybercrime awareness a person would have to understand what it means. Cybercrime awareness is when understanding how much a person knows/understands about cyber threats their network could face. In other words, cyber awareness is understanding the vulnerability or victimization of your network. This also goes to say that practicing and understanding cyber hygiene is very important. This article explains the emerging trends in cybercrime awareness in Nigeria.
When trying to understand this article and looking for how it uses social science. There are a few ways it could. The first way I see when reviewing this article is sociology. Sociology is the understanding of human behavior, social life, and social change (Case Western Reserve University). The way they use sociology in this article is by breaking down and understanding different groups of people. For example, when they discuss the people who took the survey they break everyone into different categories and get percentages from that. Some of the categories for example are females and males and single and married.
Following that another way this essay uses social science is geography. The meaning “Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments” (National Geographic Society). So how this article uses geography by studying Nigeria and its environment and people to see how or if their cyber awareness is growing. Having said that, using geographic information could be useful to see where people need to start practicing cybersecurity hygiene. The reason for this is if someone was wanting to hack or take advantage of people they base it on their location. Because if they see that they are cyber-educated they could easily take advantage of them.
Lastly, a way this article demonstrates social science is by using psychology. Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior of a human being. Now when reviewing the article and how it uses psychology one way I see is by studying the participants’ awareness of cybercrime. Ways they did this is asking the participants a scenario of questions and seeing if they are aware of this happening all because of the internet, phone, or ATM.
Next, when reading the article and what they are studying and what information they want to find. It always comes with what their questions/hypotheses were. According to Emerging Trends in Cybercrime awareness in Nigeria article their hypotheses were “H1: Internet users who demonstrated more awareness of computer-assisted cybercrime tend to experience more cybercrime victimization than those who demonstrated more awareness of computer-focused cybercrime categories. H2: Internet users who demonstrated more awareness of property cybercrime categories tend to experience more cybercrime victimization than those who demonstrated more awareness of violent cybercrime categories, trolling, airing dirty laundry, public shaming)” (Nzeakor).
When looking at what kinds of research methods they used it could depend on what part of the experiment. The reason for this is that they used multiple reach methods. For example when they were testing people’s cyber awareness by doing a questionnaire. So I would say the primary research method they used is a questionnaire, and the secondary was using surveys and in-depth interviews. So for example, they did was ask a question about cyber awareness like “Are you aware that people have been attacked, raped, or even lost money or lives through the Internet, phone, or ATM?” (Nzeakor). If they were to say yes, they would describe at least one example of what people have suffered over the last three years. If they could, they would be deemed aware of cybercrime. Having said that, that also demonstrates the type of data and analysis that was used/done in this experiment.
Following that, when looking at how this article relates to concepts from class there are a few ways. One way it can be related to module 2 is when discussing cyber hygiene and training. How that relates to this article is because it’s asking people and collecting data by asking questions about their cyber awareness. Secondly, another class is when discussing kinds of cyber attacks. For example when they show in table 2 the list of cybercrimes they were aware of and their ranking. Another way it’s related to the class is when looking at the example of how Mike Obi fell victim to cybercrime because of Facebook. As we discussed in class, social media can cause a lot of people to fall victim to cybercrime often. Lastly, another way this article can be related to the class is by how in class we discuss that a lot of the time cybercrime happens because of a lack of understanding and awareness. And that’s what they talked about in their conclusion.
This article can relate to a few marginalized groups. For example, one way it can relate to marginalized groups is when talking about senior citizens. How it relates to the article when the article discusses the study population. For example, according to the Emerging Trends in Cybercrime awareness in Nigeria, article “Internet users aged 20 to 70 years in Umuahia North Local Government Area of Abia State were the target population for this study” (Nzeakor). Another way it can relate to marginalized groups is through Racial/Cultural minorities. How it relates to that is by studying different cultures’ cyber awareness.
Overall this was a wonderful experiment and I learned a lot. When looking if I would change anything in the experiment I don’t believe I would. I believe that the steps and the procedure they took were a great way to collect the data they needed. Even down to how they valued the data. In conclusion, this was a great experiment conducted.
Works Cited
Case Western Reserve University. “What is Sociology? – Department of Sociology.” Department of Sociology, https://sociology.case.edu/what-is-sociology/. Accessed 19 March 2023.
National Geographic Society. “What is Geography?” National Geographic Society, https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/what-is-geography/. Accessed 19 March 2023.
Nzeakor, Ogochukwu Favour. “Emerging Trends in Cybercrime Awareness in Nigeria.” Virtual Commons – Bridgewater State University, 1 November 2022, https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1098&context=ijcic. Accessed 19 March 2023.