Drug dealers gone digital: using signalling theory to analyse criminal online personas and trust

Online and digital platforms play a central role in today’s illegal activities and related networks. Communicating through these channels makes creating an online criminal identity crucial to establish oneself as trustworthy and meet the needs of potential buyers, especially when reaching out to strangers in a market. A highly needed skill is balancing the signals of attracting wanted attention and of avoiding possible risks. This article explores how social media drug dealers present themselves in 173 Facebook profiles. The analysis of these online criminal personas is applied in two stages: a) a broader content analysis of the profile content and b) by using signalling theory to understand the overall visual presentation of these online criminal personas. I find that sellers fall into three main persona types: the professional dealer, private dealer, and cultural dealer. These personas signal trust in different ways through their choice of pictures, text, and personal information.