THE NIGERIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
ISSN: 0331-4111
Volume 14, No. 1, (2016)
DOI: 10.36108/NJSA/6102/14(0130)
Cyber Criminology and the Quest for Social Order in Nigerian Cyberspace
Philip N. Ndubueze
Department of Sociology Federal University Dutse Jigawa State, Nigeria
Email: pnndubueze@gmail.com
Abstract
Digital and Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) technologies have altered traditional forms of social relationships across modern societies and have raised critical concerns about social order in the cyberspace. The amorphous and borderless nature of virtual communities have allowed various deviants, criminals and terrorists elements to permeate them. The resultant criminogenic atmosphere has created a new research agenda for the discipline of criminology. This paper examines the emergence of cyber criminology as a twenty-first century field of criminology and argues that its growth is a fall-out of concerns about the increasing rate of crime and disorder in the cyberspace. Cyber criminology seeks to offer explanation to the causation of deviance, crime and terrorism in the cyberspace. The paper which is anchored on Jaishankar’s Space Transition Theory and Cohen and Felson’s Routine Activity Theory highlights the challenges, prospects and future direction of the evolving field of cyber criminology and its relevance to the quest for order in the Nigerian cyberspace.
Keywords: cybercrime, cyber criminology, cyberspace, social order, space transition theory, routine activity theory