Samenvatting

The continuous integration of the Internet in societal daily life leads to an array of new communication methods, including the Darkweb. This hidden form of the Internet (which enables much more anonymity due to several encryption techniques) seems to be used for a lot of criminal enterprise. Also in the planning phase of crimes, the Darkweb seems to play an important role. Nevertheless, research on this phenomenon is quite scarce. In the present study, a sample of 198 threads (i.e. discussion topics) was analyzed via a quantitative content analysis, after which an exploratory study was conducted to highlight patterns and structures of communications on the Darkweb. The results show that different types of Darkweb users (e.g. sellers, rookie users, etc.) vary clearly in their communication activities and the crimes that they communicate about (e.g. malware, drugs).