Digital Shadow Frontiers: Forensic Perspectives on Dark Web Psychology and Social Media

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_9How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Dark Web; illicit activity; psychology; DWSN; social media

Abstract

The Dark Web is a overlay network that requires a specific software in order to access its content. This Darknet is usually used for illicit activities, which mostly are detrimental to the society, promoting civil liberties that cannot be tracked due to layered encrypted system. This paper examines the behaviour of the individuals or groups who desperately participate in the network by engaging in criminal exchange for the need to fit in with their community and get entangled. The Darknet community doesn’t stop at a single network, it spreads through social media platforms known as Dark Web Social Network (DWSN), typically blurring the line between traditional social media and their service, demanding heavy work to the forensic analysis. Fusing the social media forensics and psychological profiling can provide the outline of the behaviour and mental state of the members of Dark Web community. The crossover of the Dark web with the social media leads this paper to conclude the yen for the human-centred psychology perspectives for the strengthening of investigations by deeply understanding the behavioural patterns seen and shaping the individual in this era of developed technologies.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Bandari Steffina Moses
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/05
TI  - Digital Shadow Frontiers: Forensic Perspectives on Dark Web Psychology and Social Media
BT  - Proceedings of the First International Conference on Advances in Forensics and Cyber Technologies (ICFACT 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 72
EP  - 103
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_9
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-610-4_9
ID  - Moses2026
ER  -