Cybercriminology: Foundations
Course Description
This course’s primary goal is to introduce students to the basic vocabulary and ideas used by cybercriminologists and other social scientists. These goals will be met in four ways:
- Students will explore the most common types of cybercrimes. Cybercrimes can be roughly divided into four categories – cybertrespass, cyberpornography, cyberviolence, and cyberdeception.
- Students will critique some of the significant debates surrounding cybercrime. Society’s understanding of what should be prohibited, how we should investigate, and how we should prosecute cybercrime are continuously being negotiated by groups in society. Our social world is socially constructed, and cybercrime issues are no different.
- Students will discuss the impacts of cybercrimes on individuals and families. While cybersecurity courses may focus more on corporations’ and governments’ concerns and how to protect the data within them, a cybercrime course focuses more on how everyday people are victimized.
Course Material
Social Science Writing Assignment
This assignment is meant to achieve two goals: (1) give students the opportunity to learn more about a topic, and (2) gain experience doing “science writing,” where social science research is summarized and communicated to the public. I was not answering a research question as you would in a research paper – I summarized what scholars have written about a topic.
What-Social-Scientists-Know-About-Data-Breaches