Online Black-Markets: An Investigation of a Digital Infrastructure in the Dark

This paper investigates the functioning of Online Black-Markets (OBMs), i.e. a digital infrastructure operating in the Dark Net that enables the exchange of illegal goods such as drugs, weapons and fake digital identities. OBMs exist notwithstanding adverse conditions such as police interventions, scams and market breakdowns. Relying on a longitudinal case study, we focus on the dynamics of interactions among actors and marketplace technologies and we identify three mechanisms explaining OBMs operations. In particular, we show that OBMs infrastructure is the result of commoditization, platformization and resilience processes. Our contribution relies on the identification of community-based mechanisms that generate the OBMs infrastructure, extending the current understanding of e-commerce and social commerce.

Blackfishing on Instagram: Influencing and the Commodification of Black Urban Aesthetics

This article examines blackfishing, a practice in which cultural and economic agents appropriate Black culture and urban aesthetics in an effort to capitalize on Black markets. Specifically, this study analyzes the Instagram accounts of four influencers (Instagram models) who were accused of blackfishing in late 2018 and is supplemented with a critical analysis of 27 news and popular press articles which comprise the media discourse surrounding the controversy. Situated within the literature on cultural appropriation and urban redevelopment policies, this study explores how Black identity is mined for its cultural and economic value in the context of digital labor. I assert that Instagram’s unique platform affordances (including its racial affordances) and the neoliberal logics which undergird cultural notions of labor facilitate the mechanisms by which Black identity is rendered a lucrative commodity vis-à-vis influencing.

How to Avoid Black Markets for Appointments with Online Booking Systems

Allocating appointment slots is presented as a new application for market design. Online booking systems are commonly used by public authorities to allocate appointments for visa interviews, driver’s licenses, passport renewals, etc. We document that black markets for appointments have developed in many parts of the world. Scalpers book the appointments that are offered for free and sell the slots to appointment seekers. We model the existing first-come-first-served booking system and propose an alternative batch system. The batch system collects applications for slots over a certain time period and then randomly allocates slots to applicants. The theory predicts and lab experiments confirm that scalpers profitably book and sell slots under the current system with sufficiently high demand, but that they are not active in the proposed batch system. We discuss practical issues for the implementation of the batch system and its applicability to other markets with scalping. (JEL C92, D47)

Illicit Provisioning: Inequality, Leveling, and Black Markets

Throughout the war, the pyramid of the ration system was remade through three illicit practices: self-provisioning, leveling, and theft. Many officials created steep new hierarchies through self-provisioning, establishing elite canteens, stores, and special parcels for themselves and their patronage networks. They also leveled distinctions by redistributing stocks, mainly allocated for workers, to feed vulnerable groups. Finally, large-scale and petty theft was ubiquitous. Shortage created demand for stolen goods, and theft in turn drained the ration system and increased shortage. Gray and black markets sprang up everywhere. Hungry workers, thieves, disabled veterans, and pensioners used markets to trade, supplement their rations, and sell stolen goods. In the absence of retail stores, markets bolstered the ration system by allowing goods to circulate, and destabilized it by providing an outlet for stolen goods. As such, they reduced stocks allocated to ordinary people and forced them to buy back at vast markups what they should have received by right.

Black markets: Fascist constructions of race in East African marketplace newsreels

This article investigates East African marketplace films to trace the developmental arc and varieties of Italian Fascist racism in empire. Totalling over 70 in number, these bantam adventures in souks and bazaars were among the most popular formats for 1930s newsreels purporting to document daily life in the colonies. The short documentary-style films were produced by LUCE, the cinematic arm for state-run propagandistic projects. Like many of the films produced by this larger cinematic body, marketplace newsreels cast Italian technology in starring roles. Tractors and sewing machines frame Italian as modernizing heroes. By focusing on visual and acoustic examples, the article examines the markets of propaganda through a sensory focus. Ultimately, this approach intertwines two modes of inquiry: the history of East African architecture and urbanism, and Fascist Italian empire film.