The Illegal Trade of Medicines on Social Media Evaluating Situational Crime Prevention Measures

This book evaluates the impact of situational crime prevention measures implemented by social media platforms to identifying, blocking, and removing content linked to illegal traded medicines. It discusses the extent of social media usage in trafficking of medicines; the ease of access; visibility of the content; language of posts; products most traded; and types of posts. Research results support the hypothesis of the limited impact of these measures, due not to a lack of effectiveness but to asymmetrical implementation.

This volume will be of interest to researchers, law enforcement, policy makers, social media groups, public health practitioners. 

Introduction.- The illegal online trade of medicines: the roles of the internet and social media websites.- Situational crime prevention measures in the illegal online trade of medicines.- Evaluation strategy.- Evaluation of social media’s SCP measures.- Conclusion.

Gabriele Baratto is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Law of the University of Trento. He research deals with the correlations between crime and the internet (particularly social media), organized crime, urban security, hate speech, counterfeiting and criminal markets, trafficking in human beings, smuggling in migrants and asylum seekers.  He is a member of the eCrime research group and the Institute of Safety and Security Studies of the University of Trento.