Chiang, Emily (2025). Linguistic mechanisms of knowledge-exchange in a dark-web money laundering forum. PLoS ONE, 20 (8),
Abstract
Money laundering facilitates serious crime, enables the expansion of criminal operations, and destabilises economies. Extant scholarship is largely concerned with anti-money laundering approaches, with far less attention being paid to the language and behaviours of the individuals who engage in money laundering. ‘Dark-web’ discussion fora are prime loci for illicit knowledge exchange and key enablers of money laundering, yet, are underexplored as sites for understanding the online activities and behaviours of users. This paper reports on a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of one such forum, guided by research questions around the key topics and common linguistic strategies by which knowledge is exchanged within a large community of individuals interested in money laundering, and the ways in which this community serves its members. The analysis identifies the forum as an extremely efficient and productive site for knowledge-exchange and thus ‘criminal upskilling’, which is attributed to three core characteristics: a strict adherence to community rules, a highly knowledgeable user base, and a culture of friendliness and reciprocity.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329777 |
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Divisions: | College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics Aston University (General) |
Funding Information: | This research was supported by a UKRI Innovate UK Smart Grant (Project No.: 1002803). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. |
Additional Information: | Copyright © 2025 Emily Chiang. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Publication ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
Data Access Statement: | Data cannot be shared publicly because it is sensitive and illicit in nature, and especially because of the possibility that it could be used to the advantage of people with criminal interests. This is in accordance with the Aston University Ethics Committee. Data will be made available from the Forensic Linguistic Databank (FoLD) at the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential data. Access can be requested at aifl_fold@aston.ac.uk |
Last Modified: | 07 Aug 2025 07:53 |
Date Deposited: | 06 Aug 2025 09:21 |
Full Text Link: | |
Related URLs: |
https://journal ... al.pone.0329777
(Publisher URL) |
PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2025-08-05 |
Published Online Date: | 2025-08-05 |
Accepted Date: | 2025-07-16 |
Authors: |
Chiang, Emily
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