As technological infrastructures increasingly mediate everyday life, they also transform how harm is enacted, policed, narrated, and resisted. From online vigilantism to platform-driven surveillance, from algorithmic governance to digitally enabled abuse, the digital is not just a backdrop to crime—it is deeply entangled in its formation and interpretation.

This symposium entitled Digital Darkside: Crime and control in online spaces brings together scholars across law, criminology, media studies, and digital sociology, the symposium critically engages with how power, violence, and justice take form in online spaces. We ask how digital technologies blur boundaries between policing and surveillance, how platform architectures influence both criminal activity and its prevention, and how digital environments reshape who is visible, who is vulnerable, and who is believed.

Across two days of keynote lectures and research presentations, the symposium opens up a space for reflection on the shifting dynamics of crime and control. Rather than offering definitive answers, it invites interdisciplinary dialogue about the uncertainties, tensions, and urgencies that define the digital darkside of contemporary society.

The symposium is held at Galaxen, UMU [map]

Welcome to the symposium and Umeå! Here you will be presented with the symposium programme, the people and an outline of the upcoming two days, packed with presentations and discussions

Simon Lindgren

Speaker: Lucia Bainotti [profile]

Abstract

Coming soon.

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1. When Words Become Warnings: Assessing Threats in Online Spaces [abstract]
   Lisa Kaati [profile]

2. Crisis in the Feed: Platformed Misinformation After the Örebro School Shooting [abstract]
   Moa Eriksson Krutrök [profile]

3. Making Sense of Senseless Violence: Introducing the '764 Network' as a case of emerging online extremism [abstract]
   Felicia Lundstedt [profile]

1. Shame and Sanction: Social Control Practices in Darknet Communities [abstract]
   Tove Gustavsson [profile]

2. Forbidden Fields: The Selling and Buying of Women's Bodies Through Online Brothels [abstract]
   Erica Bergkvist [profile]

3. (To be announced)

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1. Conceptualizing Digital Force – Police hacking in Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands [abstract]
   Marcus Naarttijärvi [profile]& Ingvild Bruce [profile]

2. Spaces beyond control? A posthuman perspective on the regulation of digital spaces [abstract TBA]
   Jannice Käll [profile]

3. Tinker, Teamer, OSINT Spy: Towards a Typology of Antifascist Doxxers in Three Cases [abstract]
   Samuel Merrill [profile]

Moa Eriksson Krutrök

Speaker: Jing Zeng [profile]

Abstract

Coming soon.

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1. Cumulative disinformation through citation: Investigating the longitudinal construction of Sweden as the ‘rape capital’ of the world [abstract]
   Mathilda Åkerlund [profile]

2. Negative campaigning and mobilization through visual disinformation [abstract]
   Xénia Farkas [profile]

3. Algorithmic Amplification: How platform design spreads disinformation [abstract TBA]
   Simon Lindgren [profile]

1. Synthetic or Authentic? - The Evidentiary Challenges of Deepfakes and AI-Generated Media [abstract]
   Nina Sunde [profile]

2. Policing online child sexual abuse – Organizational challenges and investigator wellbeing [abstract]
   Oscar Rantatalo [profile]

3. Swedish Police’s Social Media - A gray area and its implications for public safety [abstract TBA]
   Jens Alvén Sjöberg [profile]

4. The dark side of mundanity in security technologies [abstract TBA]
   Katarina Winter [profile]

Simon Lindgren

Moa Eriksson Krutrök

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