Cyber-Crime Victimization Study

• Social Guardianship: Cohen, et al.,(1981); Fisher, et al., (1998); Miethe & Meier, (1990, 1994) stated that the social dimension of guardianship under RAT is measured by the availability and number of household numbers, neighbours, peers, community watch programmers, and the law enforcement policies. Clarke and Felson (1993) have emphasized the importance of "neighbours, friends, relatives, bystanders, or the owner of the property” as the best social guardians, instead of the law enforcement policies and security agents. Whilst discussing cyber victimization, the social guardians in cyberspace are the various private means like the network admins, the computer networks, both private and public, and the users themselves who monitor each other's …show more content…
He asserts that RAT has been successfully used in the past to analyse adolescent’s cyber victimization experiences. Evidence can also be drawn from a study by Alshalan (2006) which analysed cyber-crime victimization among internet users in the U.S. The aim was to “(1) assess the factors that impact computer virus victimization; (2) assess the factors that impact cyber-crime victimization; and (3) predict fear of cyber-crime.” The RAT framework was applied to study the phenomenon and it was found that RAT was a powerful predictor of cyber …show more content…
Choi (2008) revealed that people engaging in risky Internet activities like “visiting unknown websites, downloading music, video and games” experienced cyber victimization. Thus, emphasizing that to understand and individual’s cyber victimization experiences, knowledge of their online lifestyle or routine is required. In a study of 935 adolescent’s ages 12-17 years and their parents by Mesch (2009), results were found in the favour of the application of RAT. It was found that engaging in certain types of online activities like “having an active profile on SNS, participation in chat rooms and YouTube” do increase one's chances of cyber victimized. On similar lines Holt and Bossler (2009) reported two factors highly related to cyber victimization. These were “1) regular use of chat rooms and other forms of computer mediated communications increased victimization risks, possibly by increasing exposure to motivated offenders, and 2) committing computer-based deviance increases one’s risk of online victimization” (Logan, Leukefeld , & Walker,2000). They also found these factors to be in sync with application of RAT in cybercrime studies which states that one is no longer required to leave their homes to be