Anita Lavorgna
Biographic Data
| ID | 254753 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anita Lavorgna |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anita |
| FAMILY NAME | Lavorgna |
| SIGNATURE | LAVORGNA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southampton |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8484-1613 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Intergenerational and technological changes in mafia-type groups: A transcultural research agenda to study the ‘ndrangheta and its mobility
Mafia-type groups are increasingly mobile in their structures and in their activities. We propose here to revive cultural studies on mafias and organised crime by critically introducing insights from research on transculturation into mafia mobility studies. Transculturation helps understand how cultures stratify and engage with existing power imbalances in the host countries, within migration setting. We argue that transcultural transformations—p…
Sharing as displaying: Parents’ Sharenting Practices Within Conflictual Separations
The emergent practice of sharing textual and audiovisual content concerning underage children online by their parents or guardians, also known as ‘sharenting’, is part of emerging digital cultures, which are enabled by affordances provided by new media technologies. Based on data from a passive virtual ethnography of Facebook communities, this article analyses the sharenting practices of parents involved in judicial litigations. While contributin…
Sharenting and social media properties: Exploring vicarious data harms and sociotechnical mitigations
In this paper, we demonstrate how social media technologies can co-produce data-related harms unless preventative measures are instituted. To this end, we draw on a passive ethnography of a public Facebook group in the UK practicing sharenting which occurs when parents and guardians post sensitive and identifying information about children in their care on social media. Theoretically, we draw on the 'harm translation' concept from digital crimino…
Sharenting in Digital Society: Exploring the Prospects of an Emerging Moral Panic
Debates about the risks of sharenting (the practice of parents or guardians sharing information about their children online) are gathering storm in global media reports and academic discourse. This paper analyses media representations of the practice and its risks to examine whether the attributes of a moral panic can be detected. Results reveal the presence of the attributes and the reductive depiction of sharenting risks and harms as the produc…
Criminogenic and harm-enabling features of social media platforms: The case of sharenting practices
Sharenting – that is, the sharing of identifying and sensitive information of minors, who are often overexposed online by parents or guardians – has, at times, criminogenic potential, as the information shared can enable both heinous crimes and other types of harmful conduct. Whilst most research on sharenting has focused on the sharenters and their agency, there is a gap in addressing whether and to what extent social media platforms display cri…
Unpacking the political-criminal nexus in state-cybercrimes: A macro-level typology
Criminological literature on crime and deviance in cyberspace has boomed in recent years with most studies focusing on computer integrity crimes, computer content crimes and financial cybercrimes, also discussing the opportunity to consider some of these crimes as profit-driven forms of organised crime. The existing literature, however, has not addressed extensively yet the impact of the emergence and proliferation of cyber affordances on forms o…
Evaluating Research and Scholarly Impact in Criminology and Criminal Justice in the United Kingdom and Italy: A Comparative Perspective
What scholarly impact is, and how it is evaluated, vary across different countries. In the United Kingdom, for instance, scholarly impact is mainly assessed through the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the context of providing—among other things—accountability for public investment in research, demonstrating the public benefits of research, and informing the selective allocation of research funding. In the REF system, impact needs to show a…
Online sharenting: Identifying existing vulnerabilities and demystifying media reported crime risks
Sharenting – the digital sharing of sensitive information of minors by parents or guardians – has not yet been investigated from a criminological perspective. However, there are reported concerns regarding its criminogenic potential amidst fast-growing media interest in sharenting practices, particularly in relation to the perceived crime risks. This article offers an exploratory analysis of cases where such practices led to the victimisation of …
Share with care: Negotiating children’s health and safety in sharenting practices
Sharenting – a new term emerged over the past 10 years – refers to the practice of sharing textual and audiovisual contents concerning children online by their parents or guardians, potentially impacting the construction of children’s digital identity before they can reach the age of consent. Based on a passive virtual ethnography carried out comparatively in Italian-speaking and English-speaking virtual communities focusing on children’s wellbei…
Identifying key challenges and needs in digital mental health moderation practices supporting users exhibiting risk behaviours to develop responsible AI tools: The case study of Kooth
Digital platforms for mental health and wellbeing purposes have become increasingly common to help users exhibiting risk behaviours (e.g. self-harming, eating-related disorders) across all ages, opening new frontiers in supporting vulnerable users. This study stems from a larger project, which explores how responsible AI solutions can up-scale existing manual moderation approaches and better target interventions for young people who ask for help …
To wear or not to wear? Unpacking the #NoMask discourses and conversations on Twitter
In the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, the use of face masks has been a topic broadly debated. In many Western countries, especially at the heights of the pandemic, discussions on the use of protective facemasks were often linked to what were mainly political considerations, often fueled by health-related misinformation. Our study brings together social sciences and computer science expertise to retrospectively unpack the #NoMask discourse…
Science denial and medical misinformation in pandemic times: A psycho-criminological analysis
This study integrates criminological social learning and psychological explanations of individual factors and mechanisms for science denial to offer an individual-level analysis of ‘alternative lifestyle’ subcultural groups in cyberspace in order to understand the assimilation, success and proliferation of potentially dangerous health-related misinformation. Through a rigorous passive online ethnography of two relevant self-identifying ‘alternati…
From horticulture to psychonautics: An analysis of online communities discussing and trading plants with psychotropic properties
This study is a spinoff of the cross-disciplinary project “FloraGuard: Tackling the Illegal Trade in Endangered Plants”, and focuses on the analysis of online forums dedicated to the discussion and the trades of plant species, often highly endangered in nature, that are sought after for their psychotropic properties. The study sheds light on the interesting but overlooked area of the intersection of environmental crimes, illegal online trades, an…
Criminal markets and networks in Cyberspace
This is an introduction to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime on ‘criminal markets and networks in cyberspace’. All the contributions to this special issue, even if from different standpoints and focuses, help us understand how cyberspace is (re)shaping offenses and offenders
To App or Not to App? Understanding Public Resistance to Covid-19 Digital Contact Tracing and its Criminological Relevance
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital contact tracing has been developed and promoted in many countries as a valuable tool to help the fight against the virus, allowing health authorities to react quickly and limit contagion. Very often, however, these tracing apps have faced public resistance, making their use relatively sparse and ineffective. Our study relies on an interdisciplinary approach that brings together criminological and c…
Information Pollution as Social Harm: Investigating the Digital Drift of Medical Misinformation in a Time of Crisis
By relying on a virtual ethnography approach carried out on Italian-speaking alternative lifestyle and counter-information online communities, this book shows how the nature of personal interactions online and the construction of both personal and group identities, are central to the creation and propagation of medical misinformation
Tweets and Quacks: Network and Content Analyses of Providers of Non-Science-Based Anticancer Treatments and Their Supporters on Twitter
Despite the consensus in the medical discipline that certain treatments lack scientific evidence and are worthless if not potentially dangerous, the promotion and selling of fake cures advertised as safe and effective has long plagued health care systems, praying on vulnerable patients and their loved ones. The web and social media are now playing a fundamental role in the propagation of non-science-based treatments and fraudulent medical claims,…
Information Pollution As Social Harm: Investigating the Digital Drift of Medical Misinformation in a Time of Crisis
The datafication revolution in criminal justice: An empirical exploration of frames portraying data-driven technologies for crime prevention and control
The proliferation of big data analytics in criminal justice suggests that there are positive frames and imaginaries legitimising them and depicting them as the panacea for efficient crime control. Criminological and criminal justice scholarship has paid insufficient attention to these frames and their accompanying narratives. To address the gap created by the lack of theoretical and empirical insight in this area, this article draws on a study th…
FloraGuard: Tackling the Online Illegal Trade in Endangered Plants Through a Cross-Disciplinary ICT-Enabled Methodology
This article presents a part of the ongoing Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project “FloraGuard: Tackling the illegal trade in endangered plants” that relies on cross-disciplinary approaches to analyze online marketplaces for the illegal trade in endangered plants, and explores strategies to develop digital resources to assist law enforcement in countering and disrupting this criminal market. This contribution focuses on how th…
Direct contacts with potential interviewees when carrying out online ethnography on controversial and polarized topics: A loophole in ethics guidelines
Direct contacts with research participants in online ethnography are an important tool to better understand complex social dynamics in cyberspace. The current ethical approaches guiding academic research, however, can be problematic in this regard, creating unintended tensions leading to potential research biases as well as safety and wellbeing issues for researchers working on controversial and polarized topics. The onus, we argue, ends up being…
Medical Misinformation and Social Harm in Non-Science-Based Health Practices: A Multidisciplinary Perspective
This book brings together contributions of international academics from criminology, digital sociology, health psychology, medicine, law, physics, and journalism
Caught in a Lie: The Rise and Fall of a Respectable Deviant
In this study we draw on the concept of respectable deviance to understand the journey into deviance – from her rise as an alternative health expert through to her public disgrace – of Belle Gibson, a young Australian blogger, app publisher and alternative medicine advocate who falsely claimed to have cured cancer without reverting to science-based medicine. Through the rigorous analysis of a series of media and documentary sources where Ms Gibso…
Ndrangheta: The Glocal Dimensions of the Most Powerful Italian Mafia
This book presents an historical and sociological account of the Italian mafia-type organisation known as the ‘ndrangheta. It draws together diverse perspectives on the various ‘ndrangheta clans and their behavioural models, focusing specifically on their organisational skills, their bonds with Calabrian society and Calabrian communities around the world, their mobility, and their characterisation as poly-crime organisations. The authors demonstr…
Islamist movements in the Fergana Valley: A new threat assessment approach
Existing threat assessment analyses of crime and terrorism rely on a series of indicators, first and foremost violence. However, these approaches tend to neglect local specificities. In Central Asia and especially in the Fergana Valley, there are radical groups that do not necessarily commit violent behaviour, but yet represent a threat for both their operational areas and the international community. How can the threat of radicalisation be asses…
Direct contacts with potential interviewees when carrying out online ethnography on controversial and polarized topics: A loophole in ethics guidelines
Direct contacts with research participants in online ethnography are an important tool to better understand complex social dynamics in cyberspace. The current ethical approaches guiding academic research, however, can be problematic in this regard, creating unintended tensions leading to potential research biases as well as safety and wellbeing issues for researchers working on controversial and polarized topics. The onus, we argue, ends up being…
Sharenting in Digital Society: Exploring the Prospects of an Emerging Moral Panic
Debates about the risks of sharenting (the practice of parents or guardians sharing information about their children online) are gathering storm in global media reports and academic discourse. This paper analyses media representations of the practice and its risks to examine whether the attributes of a moral panic can be detected. Results reveal the presence of the attributes and the reductive depiction of sharenting risks and harms as the produc…
The datafication revolution in criminal justice: An empirical exploration of frames portraying data-driven technologies for crime prevention and control
The proliferation of big data analytics in criminal justice suggests that there are positive frames and imaginaries legitimising them and depicting them as the panacea for efficient crime control. Criminological and criminal justice scholarship has paid insufficient attention to these frames and their accompanying narratives. To address the gap created by the lack of theoretical and empirical insight in this area, this article draws on a study th…
Types of organised crime in Italy. The multifaceted spectrum of Italian criminal associations and their different attitudes in the financial crisis and in the use of Internet technologies
Online sharenting: Identifying existing vulnerabilities and demystifying media reported crime risks
Sharenting – the digital sharing of sensitive information of minors by parents or guardians – has not yet been investigated from a criminological perspective. However, there are reported concerns regarding its criminogenic potential amidst fast-growing media interest in sharenting practices, particularly in relation to the perceived crime risks. This article offers an exploratory analysis of cases where such practices led to the victimisation of …
Sharing as displaying: Parents’ Sharenting Practices Within Conflictual Separations
The emergent practice of sharing textual and audiovisual content concerning underage children online by their parents or guardians, also known as ‘sharenting’, is part of emerging digital cultures, which are enabled by affordances provided by new media technologies. Based on data from a passive virtual ethnography of Facebook communities, this article analyses the sharenting practices of parents involved in judicial litigations. While contributin…
Sharenting and social media properties: Exploring vicarious data harms and sociotechnical mitigations
In this paper, we demonstrate how social media technologies can co-produce data-related harms unless preventative measures are instituted. To this end, we draw on a passive ethnography of a public Facebook group in the UK practicing sharenting which occurs when parents and guardians post sensitive and identifying information about children in their care on social media. Theoretically, we draw on the 'harm translation' concept from digital crimino…
Share with care: Negotiating children’s health and safety in sharenting practices
Sharenting – a new term emerged over the past 10 years – refers to the practice of sharing textual and audiovisual contents concerning children online by their parents or guardians, potentially impacting the construction of children’s digital identity before they can reach the age of consent. Based on a passive virtual ethnography carried out comparatively in Italian-speaking and English-speaking virtual communities focusing on children’s wellbei…
Caught in a Lie: The Rise and Fall of a Respectable Deviant
In this study we draw on the concept of respectable deviance to understand the journey into deviance – from her rise as an alternative health expert through to her public disgrace – of Belle Gibson, a young Australian blogger, app publisher and alternative medicine advocate who falsely claimed to have cured cancer without reverting to science-based medicine. Through the rigorous analysis of a series of media and documentary sources where Ms Gibso…
Islamist movements in the Fergana Valley: A new threat assessment approach
Existing threat assessment analyses of crime and terrorism rely on a series of indicators, first and foremost violence. However, these approaches tend to neglect local specificities. In Central Asia and especially in the Fergana Valley, there are radical groups that do not necessarily commit violent behaviour, but yet represent a threat for both their operational areas and the international community. How can the threat of radicalisation be asses…
Types of organised crime in Italy. The multifaceted spectrum of Italian criminal associations and their different attitudes in the financial crisis and in the use of Internet technologies
Islamist movements in the Fergana Valley: A new threat assessment approach
Existing threat assessment analyses of crime and terrorism rely on a series of indicators, first and foremost violence. However, these approaches tend to neglect local specificities. In Central Asia and especially in the Fergana Valley, there are radical groups that do not necessarily commit violent behaviour, but yet represent a threat for both their operational areas and the international community. How can the threat of radicalisation be asses…
Ndrangheta: The Glocal Dimensions of the Most Powerful Italian Mafia
This book presents an historical and sociological account of the Italian mafia-type organisation known as the ‘ndrangheta. It draws together diverse perspectives on the various ‘ndrangheta clans and their behavioural models, focusing specifically on their organisational skills, their bonds with Calabrian society and Calabrian communities around the world, their mobility, and their characterisation as poly-crime organisations. The authors demonstr…
Medical Misinformation and Social Harm in Non-Science-Based Health Practices: A Multidisciplinary Perspective
This book brings together contributions of international academics from criminology, digital sociology, health psychology, medicine, law, physics, and journalism
Caught in a Lie: The Rise and Fall of a Respectable Deviant
In this study we draw on the concept of respectable deviance to understand the journey into deviance – from her rise as an alternative health expert through to her public disgrace – of Belle Gibson, a young Australian blogger, app publisher and alternative medicine advocate who falsely claimed to have cured cancer without reverting to science-based medicine. Through the rigorous analysis of a series of media and documentary sources where Ms Gibso…
FloraGuard: Tackling the Online Illegal Trade in Endangered Plants Through a Cross-Disciplinary ICT-Enabled Methodology
This article presents a part of the ongoing Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project “FloraGuard: Tackling the illegal trade in endangered plants” that relies on cross-disciplinary approaches to analyze online marketplaces for the illegal trade in endangered plants, and explores strategies to develop digital resources to assist law enforcement in countering and disrupting this criminal market. This contribution focuses on how th…
Direct contacts with potential interviewees when carrying out online ethnography on controversial and polarized topics: A loophole in ethics guidelines
Direct contacts with research participants in online ethnography are an important tool to better understand complex social dynamics in cyberspace. The current ethical approaches guiding academic research, however, can be problematic in this regard, creating unintended tensions leading to potential research biases as well as safety and wellbeing issues for researchers working on controversial and polarized topics. The onus, we argue, ends up being…
To App or Not to App? Understanding Public Resistance to Covid-19 Digital Contact Tracing and its Criminological Relevance
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital contact tracing has been developed and promoted in many countries as a valuable tool to help the fight against the virus, allowing health authorities to react quickly and limit contagion. Very often, however, these tracing apps have faced public resistance, making their use relatively sparse and ineffective. Our study relies on an interdisciplinary approach that brings together criminological and c…
Information Pollution as Social Harm: Investigating the Digital Drift of Medical Misinformation in a Time of Crisis
By relying on a virtual ethnography approach carried out on Italian-speaking alternative lifestyle and counter-information online communities, this book shows how the nature of personal interactions online and the construction of both personal and group identities, are central to the creation and propagation of medical misinformation
Tweets and Quacks: Network and Content Analyses of Providers of Non-Science-Based Anticancer Treatments and Their Supporters on Twitter
Despite the consensus in the medical discipline that certain treatments lack scientific evidence and are worthless if not potentially dangerous, the promotion and selling of fake cures advertised as safe and effective has long plagued health care systems, praying on vulnerable patients and their loved ones. The web and social media are now playing a fundamental role in the propagation of non-science-based treatments and fraudulent medical claims,…
Information Pollution As Social Harm: Investigating the Digital Drift of Medical Misinformation in a Time of Crisis
The datafication revolution in criminal justice: An empirical exploration of frames portraying data-driven technologies for crime prevention and control
The proliferation of big data analytics in criminal justice suggests that there are positive frames and imaginaries legitimising them and depicting them as the panacea for efficient crime control. Criminological and criminal justice scholarship has paid insufficient attention to these frames and their accompanying narratives. To address the gap created by the lack of theoretical and empirical insight in this area, this article draws on a study th…
Identifying key challenges and needs in digital mental health moderation practices supporting users exhibiting risk behaviours to develop responsible AI tools: The case study of Kooth
Digital platforms for mental health and wellbeing purposes have become increasingly common to help users exhibiting risk behaviours (e.g. self-harming, eating-related disorders) across all ages, opening new frontiers in supporting vulnerable users. This study stems from a larger project, which explores how responsible AI solutions can up-scale existing manual moderation approaches and better target interventions for young people who ask for help …
To wear or not to wear? Unpacking the #NoMask discourses and conversations on Twitter
In the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, the use of face masks has been a topic broadly debated. In many Western countries, especially at the heights of the pandemic, discussions on the use of protective facemasks were often linked to what were mainly political considerations, often fueled by health-related misinformation. Our study brings together social sciences and computer science expertise to retrospectively unpack the #NoMask discourse…
Science denial and medical misinformation in pandemic times: A psycho-criminological analysis
This study integrates criminological social learning and psychological explanations of individual factors and mechanisms for science denial to offer an individual-level analysis of ‘alternative lifestyle’ subcultural groups in cyberspace in order to understand the assimilation, success and proliferation of potentially dangerous health-related misinformation. Through a rigorous passive online ethnography of two relevant self-identifying ‘alternati…
From horticulture to psychonautics: An analysis of online communities discussing and trading plants with psychotropic properties
This study is a spinoff of the cross-disciplinary project “FloraGuard: Tackling the Illegal Trade in Endangered Plants”, and focuses on the analysis of online forums dedicated to the discussion and the trades of plant species, often highly endangered in nature, that are sought after for their psychotropic properties. The study sheds light on the interesting but overlooked area of the intersection of environmental crimes, illegal online trades, an…
Criminal markets and networks in Cyberspace
This is an introduction to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime on ‘criminal markets and networks in cyberspace’. All the contributions to this special issue, even if from different standpoints and focuses, help us understand how cyberspace is (re)shaping offenses and offenders
Criminogenic and harm-enabling features of social media platforms: The case of sharenting practices
Sharenting – that is, the sharing of identifying and sensitive information of minors, who are often overexposed online by parents or guardians – has, at times, criminogenic potential, as the information shared can enable both heinous crimes and other types of harmful conduct. Whilst most research on sharenting has focused on the sharenters and their agency, there is a gap in addressing whether and to what extent social media platforms display cri…
Unpacking the political-criminal nexus in state-cybercrimes: A macro-level typology
Criminological literature on crime and deviance in cyberspace has boomed in recent years with most studies focusing on computer integrity crimes, computer content crimes and financial cybercrimes, also discussing the opportunity to consider some of these crimes as profit-driven forms of organised crime. The existing literature, however, has not addressed extensively yet the impact of the emergence and proliferation of cyber affordances on forms o…
Evaluating Research and Scholarly Impact in Criminology and Criminal Justice in the United Kingdom and Italy: A Comparative Perspective
What scholarly impact is, and how it is evaluated, vary across different countries. In the United Kingdom, for instance, scholarly impact is mainly assessed through the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the context of providing—among other things—accountability for public investment in research, demonstrating the public benefits of research, and informing the selective allocation of research funding. In the REF system, impact needs to show a…
Online sharenting: Identifying existing vulnerabilities and demystifying media reported crime risks
Sharenting – the digital sharing of sensitive information of minors by parents or guardians – has not yet been investigated from a criminological perspective. However, there are reported concerns regarding its criminogenic potential amidst fast-growing media interest in sharenting practices, particularly in relation to the perceived crime risks. This article offers an exploratory analysis of cases where such practices led to the victimisation of …
Share with care: Negotiating children’s health and safety in sharenting practices
Sharenting – a new term emerged over the past 10 years – refers to the practice of sharing textual and audiovisual contents concerning children online by their parents or guardians, potentially impacting the construction of children’s digital identity before they can reach the age of consent. Based on a passive virtual ethnography carried out comparatively in Italian-speaking and English-speaking virtual communities focusing on children’s wellbei…
Intergenerational and technological changes in mafia-type groups: A transcultural research agenda to study the ‘ndrangheta and its mobility
Mafia-type groups are increasingly mobile in their structures and in their activities. We propose here to revive cultural studies on mafias and organised crime by critically introducing insights from research on transculturation into mafia mobility studies. Transculturation helps understand how cultures stratify and engage with existing power imbalances in the host countries, within migration setting. We argue that transcultural transformations—p…
Sharing as displaying: Parents’ Sharenting Practices Within Conflictual Separations
The emergent practice of sharing textual and audiovisual content concerning underage children online by their parents or guardians, also known as ‘sharenting’, is part of emerging digital cultures, which are enabled by affordances provided by new media technologies. Based on data from a passive virtual ethnography of Facebook communities, this article analyses the sharenting practices of parents involved in judicial litigations. While contributin…
Sharenting and social media properties: Exploring vicarious data harms and sociotechnical mitigations
In this paper, we demonstrate how social media technologies can co-produce data-related harms unless preventative measures are instituted. To this end, we draw on a passive ethnography of a public Facebook group in the UK practicing sharenting which occurs when parents and guardians post sensitive and identifying information about children in their care on social media. Theoretically, we draw on the 'harm translation' concept from digital crimino…
Political science (22 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Public relations (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Criminology (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Internet privacy (10 works) · Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies (7 works)