The hypothesis of the article is that understanding cybercrime and cybersecurity requires researchers to take a multidisciplinary approach to the matter. This is due to the fact that cybersecurity is multifaceted, involving both human and machine components. The over-focus of past cybercrime researchers on the technical side of the matter has, according to the article, been a hindrance to the proper study of cybersecurity and cybercrime.

The principle of this article relates to the social sciences because it demonstrates its point by discussing technology’s impact on society. Especially how said impact relates to the field of criminology. Another major focus that relates to the social sciences is the focus on the evolution of theories around cybercrime. This is relevant because these theories oftentimes rely on the author’s understanding of society.

The team behind this article mostly combed the Social Science Citation Index to reach their information. Their search checked keywords such as cyber$crime in the title or abstract of an article in the index. This brought back 3,815 results. After that, 180 results were excluded for lacking information vital to the analysis. This resulted in 3,635 articles being found that were written about cybercrime in the SSCI between 1995 and 2021. This method of research is known as bibliographics and is useful in figuring out how the discussion of a given topic has changed over time.

The bibliographic scan showed that cybercrime became a significantly greater topic of discussion as time went on. With there being over seven hundred results in 2020 as opposed to only one in 1995. Publications from more recent years were also shown to have been written by a larger pool of researchers than publications from further in the past.

This topic relates to the concerns of marginalized groups because, while the general conception is that large organizations are the main victims of cybercrime, this is not true for “petty” cybercrime such as phishing. The public in general lacks the deep understanding of cybersecurity concepts needed to be truly inoculated from threat actors’ attempts to use social engineering. However falling victim to a threat actor is a much greater catastrophe for a poor, fixed income. or working class individual than it is to someone more affluent. Put simply, less money means more for people with lower incomes.

This study contributes to society by showcasing how the academic understanding of cybercrime has evolved over the years. Showing this evolution in such a clear fashion contextualizes and therefore improves the discussion of cybercrime. This, ultimately, makes it easier to protect individuals from threat actors who use the internet for their crimes.

Works Cited:

https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1154&context=ijcic