Information creation on online drug forums: How drug use becomes moral on the margins of science

Abstract

Potential users of grey-market substances seek out internet drug websites to gather legal high information. However, where previous researchers have investigated drug wikis as sources of drug information, few have looked into the drug forums where an abundance of legal-high information is created. Knowledge is produced on internet drug forums through social processes of drug information sharing and relating personal experiences. These knowledge production efforts are a response to internet drug forum members’ perceived need to objectively understand a drug’s behavior. This community perspective, therefore, shapes online drug forum information sharing into a marginal form of citizen science – one that does not incorporate scientist oversight or directly engage with institutional science. The article argues that drug use becomes a social ritual whereby the sharing of drug information is an ethical practice. Additionally, because first-hand experience is needed to create drug information on new substances, a moral undertone is imposed onto drug experimentation.