Developing a Resource Model of Power and Authority in Anonymous Online Criminal Interactions

The purpose of this paper is to provide both a theoretical foundation and a practical framework for analysing power and authority in online interactions. This is to assist forensic linguists and law enforcement in their understanding of anonymous online criminal networks, and the roles of individuals in these online communities. The lack of contextual knowledge present in anonymous online fora creates a challenge for the analyst in finding a framework to theorise, explore, and describe different types of power performance and thus the different roles of interactants in these fora. In this paper, we provide a framework to describe the basis on which individuals make claims to power and use this framework to explore the nature and distribution of power across different fora of both criminal and benign intent. This is developed through an analysis of three online discussion fora, of approximately 160,000 words, resulting in a framework of nine main categories of power resource. This allows us to contrast the three fora, showing differences in the nature and distribution of power resource, and also enables description of individuals as high-resource or low-resource with regards to their claims to power. This theory and framework can also be productive in the analysis of language and power in computer mediated communication (CMC) more widely.